


One Big Kerffufle

by SpaceQueenie



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Best Friend Gwen, Hurt Peter Parker, Identity Reveal, Magic School Bus References, Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Procedures, Mild Language, Peter is 18, Peter is a nerd, Powerpuff Girls References, Serious Injuries, Slow Build, Tags May Change, Team to family, lots of bugs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-26 04:31:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12051381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceQueenie/pseuds/SpaceQueenie
Summary: “Uh, yeah,” Peter said lamely. “Yeah, pretty sure. As long as they can’t chew through it. Ms. Frizzle and Phoebe got out because some other ants chewed through their webs, and I think the PowerPuffs almost got free too. Wanda and Keesha are stuck in a ball though.”“You named them? After cartoon characters.” Peter did not appreciate the smug look on the archer’s face. “Please tell me I heard that right.”“I don’t need this right now.”





	1. Chapter 1

If Gwen wasn't at least a little mad when Peter showed up an hour and a half late, hair messy and with a look of ‘I’ve just woken up’, Hell was frozen over and Spider-Man was New York’s favorite hero of all time. Thankfully, she was furious, the brimstone down under was still flaming, and his alter-ego was still everyone’s favorite mid-air target for half-eaten hot dogs and empty soda cans.

Gwen was sitting at a corner table in the bustling coffee shop. Peter was able to spot her long blonde hair and light blue jacket from across the room, but getting to her through the crowd was tough. Once he got closer, he almost wanted to turn around and slip back through the door, still unseen. Although her posture was calm and collected, the look on her face betrayed her true emotions. Her brow was furrowed ever so slightly, and she shot out a glare the second she saw Peter. Her hands were folded around what had to be at least her second cup of coffee, and when Peter slid into the seat across from her she didn’t smile. He gulped.

“I can explain,” Were the first words out of Peter’s mouth. That was a mistake and he knew it. Gwen did not want an explanation, she wanted an apology. Trying to explain away why he was so tired after spending the entire night out when everyone thought he got a full night's rest was an automatic response these days. Since Gwen knew about what he did with his spare time, she most likely knew why he was late. But Gwen had only known for a few months, and it was hard to ditch old habits.

“Does this have anything to do with our mutual friend?” She said, her brow furrowing even more. ‘Mutual friend’ was the phrase they had agreed upon for talking about Spider-Man in public. She often wanted to ask him about stuff that happened, and it was way easier than saying some ridiculous codeword. (At first she wanted to pretend Spider-Man was Peter’s pet spider, but that was just a little too weird for him.)

“No? Maybe. I guess?” Peter leaned back in his chair and fiddled with his sleeves. “I just overslept. I was up really late last night.”

Gwen sighed. Peter felt something bump up against his arm and found the cup of coffee Gwen had been holding on to when he reached for it. He looked up at Gwen, and she motioned for him to take a sip. Surprisingly, it was almost full. Before he could ask the question forming in his mind, Gwen answered it.

“When you texted me that you were on your way, I went ahead and bought it for you.” She put her elbows on the table and propped her head up with her hands. “You need to take care of yourself more. I can see bags under your eyes.”

“Does this mean you aren’t mad?” Peter asked, hopefully.

“Oh, no, I’m totally lecturing you when your brain can handle it. And since you were so late, you’re making it up to me for the rest of the day.”” Ah. That made much more sense. The caffeine- the wonderful, glorious caffeine- was just a trap to get him coherent enough to enact her _evil_ plans. Like going shopping. She was most definitely talking about taking him shopping with her now. Eh, the coffee was worth it, and maybe he could get her to buy him lunch at his favorite hot dog stand.

 Once Peter had finished the coffee, the two exited the shop and turned the corner towards a thrift shop that Gwen had found the other day. She’d been wanting to go for a few weeks, but with all the work from all the classes she was taking in her senior year, and her internship, she hadn't had any time until this weekend. She probably didn't even have time this weekend and was just pushing something off in order to take a much needed day off. Peter could feel how she was always so stressed out. He was too, he had the same classes as her and at least tried to keep up with the work while he went out almost every night, but he still felt like she was always doing more somehow.

Gwen was practically dragging him behind her at a pace that was too fast for eleven in the morning on a Saturday, stating that she had a schedule to keep, was two hours behind thanks to Peter, and wanted to avoid the hustle and bustle of the lunch hour rush. They weaved in and out of the lines of pedestrians making their way to wherever and sidestepped pieces of litter and chewed gum as they marched down the sidewalk with purpose.

They started to leave behind the buildings that were newer or recently renovated and came to an area that had a lot of older buildings. Most people would say it looked historic. Peter thought it'd be the easiest place for someone to drop part of a building on him, either on purpose or by accident. Both had already happened several times. Once they finally reached the shop, Peter was slightly disappointed. From the way Gwen had been acting the entire way here, he was assuming it’d be some sort of hidden treasure. Not a hole-in-the-wall, dusty old shop that looked like no one had been there in years.

A bell rang when they entered the shop. A musty smell mixed with some lavender Febreze suddenly hit Peter smack in the face, and the semi-fresh air he was used to was cut off when the door closed behind him. He held in a sneeze. The place was tiny, with too many clothes stuffed into racks in the back of the shop, a weird mix of items on wall shelves on both sides, and a whole lot of records in boxes on the floor. The guy who Peter assumed to be the owner was an older man. He was sitting in a folded chair with a pillow on it behind the counter right by the front door and didn't look up from his book when they walked in. The walls of the store were a weird, egg yolk color, and the paint was peeling in a couple of places. It was a cute store, but it obviously needed a little bit of TLC. Dust flew off when Gwen touched one of the jackets. Peter couldn’t hold in the sneeze this time.

“Bless you,” said someone in the very back.

“Thanks,” Peter sniffed out while using his sleeve to wipe his nose. He stood on his tiptoes to see past the racks at who was back there. The voice had come from a tall, muscular man who looked like he was in his mid- to late- twenties. He was turned away from the duo and was wearing a baseball cap pulled low over his face, but Peter still caught a short glimpse of it. He couldn’t be too sure, but the guy looked a little familiar.

Then again, everyone looked familiar when they wore the most generic outfit ever, had the most common blonde white guy haircut known to mankind, and the visible part of their face consisted of the left side of their chin. Peter tried not to put too much thought into his suspicious feelings. He had too many of those these days, and really didn’t want them to ruin his day.

Gwen dove straight into the racks of clothing. She rummaged through them, looking both for herself and for Peter. Every once in awhile, she’d pull something off the rack and hold it out in front of her,  judging its potential with a little bit of his help. Mostly she would put them all back, but if they were deemed worthy she’d toss them to Peter to hold. It was around the time he had about three pairs of jeans, two shirts and an old sweater that had an easily fixable hole in it that she found something perfect for Peter.

“Petey, look!” She said, holding the shirt up. Peter had to drape everything he was holding over his arms and hold them out like a weird human clothesline. Once he was finally able to see what was on the shirt, he groaned. It was an incredibly faded Captain America shirt. It had either been worn and washed a number of times, or was just that old. Probably both. Either way, the shield was still completely recognizable. “You love this kind of stuff.”

“No, I don’t,” Peter muttered. Gwen tossed him a _Don’t-you-dare-lie-to-me_ look. “Well, not anymore.”

She rolled her eyes as if that was just completely absurd. It kind of was, considering how he had acted in the past. She was probably thinking he didn’t want to geek out in a semi-public place. At one point he had a major hero complex. He almost worshipped the Captain for being able to not only be a hero but also be liked for it. The scrawny kid who was always bullied suddenly turning into a majorly buff American icon part didn’t hurt any either. When he suddenly showed back up seventy years later, with a couple other heroes, and they started taking down aliens and other world ending threats, Peter had been a little starstruck at first. Then he had met a few of them in person when he had to take down one of the regulars, and the bubble was burst.  

“And why not?” Gwen pushed. He had met only a few of the Avengers for the first, and hopefully last, time before she found out. He also had never told her about it. He really didn’t want to ruin someone else’s view of them, but he also really couldn’t hide anything from Gwen.

“Because the Avengers are big ol’ jerkfaces,” Peter said.

Gwen looked a little shocked but covered it up quickly. She shoved the shirt back into its place in the rack and kept looking. “You’re telling me this story later,” She whispered as she held up another shirt to his chest and quickly put it back. “The entire story.”

At some point in their conversation, the guy who was with them in the racks had wandered closer. Peter hadn’t noticed because he was too busy trying to decide whether to crush Gwen’s vision of several of the world’s heroes or not, but the guy looked a little off-put. Maybe he’d heard what Peter had said about the Avengers and was a fan or something. Then again, everyone was a fan of the Avengers. Stop one alien invasion, everybody seems to love you. Well if he was upset, it was his fault for eavesdropping.

When Gwen finally believed she’d stuffed enough clothes into Peter’s arms, she started to sort through them to make a final selection. Whenever Peter tried to make a suggestion about something, it seemed like she started her pros and cons list on the item over. Eventually, he just stopped talking and let her work through them. Once they left the store, Peter’s arms were weighed down with bags of clothing and Gwen’s wallet was a little lighter.

“Is it lunchtime yet?” Peter moaned. “I’m starving. You are starving me to death.”

“I will buy you food, but only if you tell me that Avengers story,” Gwen replied.

“That’s extortion. Blackmail. Maybe bribery.” Peter narrowed his eyes in contemplation, then gave up. “The fact that it’s something illegal and or fishy is my point here. You can’t make me tell you what happened.”

“I’m not making you tell me. I’m offering to pay for your lunch under the condition that you do so.”

“So it is bribery.”

“If you don’t want to tell me, buy your own lunch.” Peter bit his lip. He really didn’t want to give up an offer of free food, even if it came with an undesirable add-on. So he caved.

“I’ll tell you, but we have to get hot dogs. I’ll show you the place.” He pretended not to see Gwen smile as he led her towards his new favorite hot dog stand.

  


Peter was eating his third hot dog. He practically inhaled the first in less than a minute, so Gwen had gone back and gotten two more, just in case. He stopped after his second to wipe the relish off of his face. He ate the third one more slowly, trying to actually taste it this time. Gwen sat patiently next to him and waited for him to put it down before asking.

“So,” She started when it looked like Peter was near finishing up. “You met the Avengers.”

“A little louder, please? I think that old lady across the street might’ve had some trouble hearing you.” Gwen smacked him in the arm.

“You met the Avengers,” She said, now a little quieter. “And now you think they’re assholes.”

“What I said was jerks, but I guess that works too.” Peter stuffed the rest of his hot dog into his mouth. He was at least going to finish his lunch completely before getting into this. “I met a few of them a little while back, before you found out. Remember the Rhino thing a few months back? I guess they weren’t too busy doing whatever it is they usually do, so a couple of them showed up to try and help.”

“I remember that. Didn’t they stop the Rhino from destroying a chunk of Midtown?”

“No, I did,” Peter said through gritted teeth. “They started the whole thing in the first place. I’ve dealt with the Rhino more times than I’d like to mention by now. He’s really not as dumb as he looks. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not smart by any means. It’s just that people see a rampaging guy in a rhino costume and don’t think about conversing. Talking your problems out goes a long way.” Gwen looked skeptical.

“Anyway,” Peter continued, “There I was, conversing with the Rhino. The guy had just knocked over a bank and I was _this close_ to convincing him to skip the usual song and dance we do. He’d get a lesser sentence if he turned himself in willingly and returned the money, we’d both get less bruises, and the city, minus the bank of course, would stay in one piece. Dude seemed to be listening too. Like I said, he’s not too dumb, ‘specially when it comes to all those going to jail sort of things.”

“You’re telling me,” Gwen pointed to Peter, her face growing more skeptical by the second. “That you convinced the Rhino to turn himself in just by talking to him.”

“Don’t look at me like that. I always try it with the guys I think it might have a chance on.” Peter frowned at the memory. This was where the story turned sour.

“If it was working so well, why’d he end up on the warpath?”

“That’s where the Avengers come in,” Peter replied. “First Iron-Man showed up and shot him with that blaster thing he’s got. Almost hit me too, but I jumped out of the way in time. That was a real conversation killer, right there. Probably thought I was just setting him up for a massive beat down, but why would I waste a whole twenty minutes talking to him just for that? I could’ve webbed him at any point. The Rhino doesn’t think when he gets mad. Then an arrow came out of nowhere and _exploded_ . Like I didn’t have enough to worry about already, with the Rhino and Iron-Man, now I had random arrows that also _explode_.” He made a motion with his hands for emphasis when he said the word ‘explode’.

“That was Hawkeye, in case you didn’t know. He’s the one that shoots the arrows.” Peter was on a roll now. “So, Rhino just got up from being hit with a repulsor blast because of course he can, he’s the Rhino. He’s super mad and all peace talks have broken down, so now he’s going to break, like, half of Midtown. I thought something like this might happen, minus the Avengers, so I had my extra strong webbing on me. The one I make specifically for guys like the Rhino. What I find out when I try to use it is that Hawkeye’s arrows cut straight through it.”

“They apparently use comm systems to talk to each other. I just shot webs like a normal person, not thinking about arrows cutting them and dropping me out of the sky, but no. It took forever to get them to talk to me. I just focused on saving pedestrians until I could get a clear shot at the Rhino. That was when I found out that Iron-Man’s repulsors at full power can totally melt that version of my webbing, which is something I need to work on when I find the time.”

“And the, uh, other kind isn't fireproof? Or like, heat resistant?” Gwen asked hesitantly.

“My normal formula? Not for that much heat. Like, for normal, everyday villain heat.”

“No, the other one.” _Oh,_ Peter thought. Gwen was referring to the newest kind of webbing Peter had acquired. The webbing of the more organic variety.

“I didn't try it because I still feel like the fact that I even have that is disgusting. Back to the story. I almost had him wrapped like a Christmas present, but the tincan fired at the same time. Crossing streams is a no-no, and he liquified my webbing. And once we finally took him down, they lectured me! Me! I’ve been doing this way longer than they have. Long story short, the Avengers turned what would’ve been the shortest villain encounter of my crime-fighting career into a giant kerfuffle.” Peter concluded.

“No one says kerfuffle, Peter,” Gwen said.

“That’s what you focus on?” Peter laughed. “That day was terrible for me, you know. Like, when they say ‘Don’t meet your heroes’. I met them, and was thoroughly disappointed.” He made pouty face.

“You met Tony Stark, a dude who is notoriously a jerk, and the guy who shoots arrows at people. Like, the lamest and most rude Avenger.” Gwen laughed at Peter’s stunned face.

“Hawkeye is not lame!” Peter threw his hands out in exasperation. “I can’t argue with you about Tony Stark. But Hawkeye is not lame! The exploding arrows he shot at me were incredibly awesome.”

“All I’m saying is that there’s way cooler Avengers and probably way nicer Avengers for you to meet.” Gwen was totally right, Peter knew. He just wasn’t going to let his beef with the Avengers go that easily. He could take everything they threw at him, but how they acted about the villains, and crime in general in this town? It rubbed him the wrong way.

He stood up from the bench they were sitting on and stretched. “Didn't you have more stuff to do today?”

“Thank you for reminding me, I almost forgot to lecture you on how awful you've looked recently.” Peter smacked his forehead as Gwen hopped up and grabbed her things. That was not his best subject change. “Walk me home while I talk.”

Peter slid his bag over his shoulder and started walking, keeping himself about a foot behind her. He only half listened to her go on about how he needed to get more sleep and eat regularly and he looked like death all the time and if he slept more he wouldn't always be late and _blah, blah, blah_. He’d heard the same spiel a dozen times already. She should just record it and play it back whenever she thinks he needs to hear it. Maybe make it his ringtone for when she called.

He was pulled out of his thoughts and back to Gwen when he realized she had stopped mid-step. She had also stopped talking. Or at least, had stopped scolding him like Aunt May usually did. Now she was just looking around very confused.

“What’s wrong?” Peter asked before realizing it was a dumb question. Dozens of people were running past them in the opposite direction that they were going. He knew something must be going on up ahead, and that meant he needed to help. “I think I should-”

“Go?” Gwen finished for him. “Yeah. I can make it home myself, don’t worry. I’ll take the long way.”

Peter gripped the strap of his bag and made to turn into a nearby alleyway, but Gwen caught his arm. “Please be safe.”

“I always am,” He lied before ducking away to change. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avoiding the cleavers they had on their faces was going to be an issue, especially since they were now surrounding him, and more ants had begun to perk up around the area around him due to the noise they were making. He webbed Ms. Frizzle and Phoebe’s entire heads to the ground and frog-leapt over their now comically wiggling bodies. He really didn’t have time to worry about whether that would hold or if they could still chew through with their freaky ant mouths. Instead, he had to worry about the other three ants that were skittering around their dazed friends as fast as their six legs could carry them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo! Been swamped with other stuff, but I finally finished this chapter! Fight scenes are not my forte, but I hope you guys like it!

Yes, New York had a little bit of a pest problem. There were rats in the sewers, Peter knew that much from experience. He’d spent way more time in the sewers as Spider-Man than he’d ever wanted to, and he’d seen rats and bugs bigger than he’d ever thought possible. Rats nearly the size of alley cats, and bugs that were the size of his hand. Sometimes, they came out into the alleys while he was on a regular patrol and scare the bejeezus out of him and whoever else was there.

  
Eventually, Peter became comfortable with the rats. Comfortable really wasn’t the right word for it. He became used to the rats. He saw them most often, and they usually just scurried away when they saw him coming. But no matter what happened, he could never get used to the bugs. They stared at him with their black, beady, soulless little eyes. None of them ever moved out of his way, not even when he got close, and he had to try hard not to step on them in the dark. Peter didn’t like bugs. Not even the little ones.

  
So, when he crawled out of the alleyway and swung down the street after having safely stored his stuff behind a dumpster, Peter was less than happy. One could say he was decidedly unhappy.

  
The first thing he noticed was the ants. There was no way anyone would be able to miss them. These things were not the size any ant should be. They were the size of large dogs. Not Max down the street who likes frisbees and tennis balls, the menacing kind of dogs that bark and make you jump two feet in the air when you walk by their fence. There also happened to be several dozens of them spread out across the street, just generally wreaking havoc all over. A newspaper stand was abandoned and magazines were torn to shreds all over the sidewalk, some poor guy’s bicycle had been twisted into an Avant-Garde sculpture that belonged in the MOMA, and dozens of storefront windows were now glass shards on the ground. Very few people were still on the street, and Peter assumed that they had either barricaded themselves inside the nearby buildings to avoid the ants, or gotten the hell out of dodge. Either way, it was much smarter than being out here with these things.

  
They were dark red and chatty. Chattering noises filled the air and made Peter’s hair stand on end. As if they weren’t creepy enough, with those eyes, their hairy legs, and the pincers that could take off an arm, they had to make noises. He thought that ants used pheromones to communicate, not those weird little chirping, chittering sounds. He was definitely going to make Gwen look this up later and tell him if this was a normal ant thing and not just a giant ant thing, because this was definitely nightmare-fuel and he did not want to be alone in this boat.

  
The second thing he noticed was how weird the ants were acting. Despite the name choice, he didn’t claim to be an expert on any kind of insect, but he still knew a thing or two about ants from all those times he left food on the counter or forgot to do the dishes. Bottom line, normal ants loved food. These ants ignored everything that even resembled food and instead, barreled through everything in their path like bugs on a mission. Those that were on the ground were skittering around with their heads low, and the ones that had begun to climb the sides of a couple of the buildings would plop their heads down and then perk them up every couple of feet when they hit the ledge of a window. It was almost as if they were sniffing the ground, and the walls, trying to hunt something down.

  
The third thing Peter noticed, which probably would’ve been the first thing he noticed if it was anything other than giant insects attacking New York, was that he wasn’t alone on the street. Well, there was the obvious churning mass of devil bugs underneath him, but aside from that there was someone he really had hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with again. Hovering above the building next to the one Peter was attached to was the Tin-Can himself, talking into one of those comms Peter oh, so loved. Whoever he was talking to on the other end, they were so important that he hadn’t noticed the Spider on the wall to his right.

  
Peter sighed. _Small mercies_ , he thought, grimacing underneath his mask at the memory of their last encounter before averting his full attention back to the bugs.

  
The problem now was that he didn’t know how was he going to take down and contain these ants. They really hadn’t hurt anyone, maybe ruined a couple of picnics, so if he could do this quickly and efficiently then everyone could win. He quickly ran through his mind for every fact from those late-night nature documentaries he used to watch when he couldn’t sleep. Regular ants could lift massive amounts in proportion to their body mass, and he was willing to bet that it was at least similar for these guys. Webbing them up would work, but he’d feel a lot better if he could use his extra strength webbing. Unfortunately, after the fight with the Rhino he hadn’t had any time to make any more, so he was plum out of luck in that vein. He would still try his regular webbing. If it broke, it broke, and then he’d just have to go hand to hand. With the ants. Well, he was good with hand to hand, especially after all these years of practice. At least good enough to take down some ants. Maybe afterward he’d just leave it to the Avengers for clean-up. If they were good at anything at all, they were good at cleaning up messes.

  
The real problem with webbing them up was their mandibles. Every one of them had razor sharp pincers that looked like they could chop him in bits if given the chance. Something that sharp, with that much force behind it, could definitely cut his web. He’d have to be careful of those. And hope these were just red ants and not fire ants.

  
The decision to go for it took less than thirty seconds. Peter bunched his muscles and prepared to jump down to the street and towards the nearest bunch of ants, hand primed on his web-shooter. Just as he shot of the wall and let off a shot with a resounding Thwip!, he heard the sickeningly familiar high-pitched shriek that could only mean one thing; Iron-Man was taking off.

  
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw the red and gold figure fly down the street towards some ants that had begun to stray around the corner where he’d left Gwen. His heart skipped a beat even though he knew she was long gone by now. She had stopped trying to help him out in the field without permission when she figured out she was just another person he worried about. Peter knew that everyone had cleared out by now, but if she or anyone else was there, Peter wouldn’t have been able to get there in time. He can move like Hell, but he can’t fly. Maybe it was a good thing that another hero was here to help.

  
The web he’d shot off hit the bug in the torso. It was unable to twist around to chew on the webbing trapping it and struggled uselessly to break free. What he hadn’t noticed from above was that the ants were mostly traveling in packs of two or three, so he had to deal with two more right away. Ant Two was slightly larger than Ant Three, and seemed to oversee this little bunch. Both were not happy that Ant One was now out of commission. Ant Two lifted its head and stretched its pincers wide as if preparing to bite down hard on any piece of him it could get to. Peter took the opportunity to shoot a web at its front legs, aiming carefully around the sharp pincers that might cut his webbing. Three made an angry hissing noise and snapped at him, but stopped its forward march when Two made a low chittering noise. Peter once again aimed around its face when he stuck it to the sidewalk. Three down, an entire colony to go.

  
“There are just way too many of you to go by numbers here.” He said to one of the ants squirming next to him while scratching the top of his head. “You were in charge, and you were super ready for some smackdown, so I’m going with Blossom and Buttercup.” He pointed to the last ant in the trio. “I guess that makes you Bubbles.”

  
Another group was clustered around a seemingly abandoned bus. Its door was open and its windows were mostly cracked or broken from the outside. Peter left the PowerPuffs and shot off toward them. He saw one duck inside the opened back, then quickly emerge from the front door of the bus and climb onto its side, not having found anything of interest inside. _Good,_ he thought. _No people._

  
“Girl names, girl names…” Peter muttered to himself as he mentally counted how many ants were hanging around the bus. Five, but they were starting to split up into opposite directions. He was going to have to do something to get their attention. “I’m totally calling you Ms. Frizzle.” He shot at the ant farthest away from him, the one still at the front door of the bus, and tugged back. It was pulled into two others, and all three took a hard tumble onto the ground. The other two instantly rounded on Peter, and once the others scrambled to their feet they weren’t far behind. All of them were chattering incessantly. Instantly he wondered if it wasn’t such a good idea.  
“I don’t think I like your teaching style, Ms. Frizzle.” Peter shot a web at her feet. Or at least, at the feet of the ant he thought was her. They kind of got jumbled together when they fell. Another bug shifted position, and both became stuck together to the concrete. The two were in a position where The-Ant-That-Was-Not-Ms. Frizzle (Peter really needed to get on with naming these bugs) could chew straight through it with her razor-sharp pincers like Peter would pull chewing gum off of his shoe. He winced and chanced a glance behind him at the PowerPuffs. He was relieved to see that they were still stuck tight to the asphalt. None of them could reach their mandibles down far enough to free themselves. He was just hoping that none of the other ants would get a clue and go help them.

  
“I’m going to name _you_ Phoebe because right now the class _really_ doesn’t like you,” Peter said to the bug that had chewed through the webbing. Phoebe snapped at his ankle, and Peter hopped backward out of the way before he became a foot shorter. “This is why I’m more of a Carlos guy!”

  
Avoiding the cleavers they had on their faces was going to be an issue, especially since they were now surrounding him, and more ants had begun to perk up around the area around him due to the noise they were making. He webbed Ms. Frizzle and Phoebe’s entire heads to the ground and frog-leapt over their now comically wiggling bodies. He really didn’t have time to worry about whether that would hold or if they could still chew through with their freaky ant mouths. Instead, he had to worry about the other three ants that were skittering around their dazed friends as fast as their six legs could carry them.

  
“Now Wanda,” Peter said disapprovingly. “You, Keesha, and, uh, Liz? No, that’s the lizard…” As he spoke, Peter quickly wrapped one arm in webbing down to his elbow to make a nice, makeshift padding. They were moving around too much for him to get a clear shot with his webbing, and so he’d have to go hand to hand. He had no idea if it would be thick enough, but it’d just have to work for now and he’d deal with the consequences later. “Eh, I’ll run with it. If you gals could just-” He lunged at the closest one, aiming a punch at its head. Wanda, the ant he had gone for, bit into the wrapping like he had planned. Peter grit his teeth as the pincers dug into the skin of his arm.

  
_Not thick enough._

  
With his free hand, Peter grabbed at the bug’s torso and planted his feet firmly on the ground before pushing the ant up off its legs. He rotated the top half of his body, pushing hard at the end to force the ant to slide off his arm, and half-tossed, half-rolled Wanda towards Keesha. She caught the brunt force of it when Wanda landed on her. The two were a confusing ball of jointed limbs and screeching, with one of them on her back and the other trapped beneath her. Peter quickly webbed them together in a thick ball. He put his hands on his knees and took in a deep breath.

  
Then, Peter nearly let out the most girlish scream anyone this side of the Hudson would ever hear when something smacked into his back hard and threw off his balance completely. He threw out both hands to stop himself from falling, forgetting that his arm had just been ripped into by massive ant face-machetes. A small yelp escaped his lips at the pain as he tried to flip himself over onto his back. He was successful in turning most of his body, but the weight that was on him held his good arm down at an odd angle. Peter now saw Liz staring down at him with her beady, black, and not-so-little eyes. Underneath the mask, Peter’s own eyes widened to the size of saucers. He really did not like bugs.

  
The problem with Liz was that she was bigger than the others, by at least a foot and a bit. This almost guaranteed that she was stronger than the others, and the fact that she literally had the upper hand here was not a good thing. Especially with Peter down one and a half good arms, with one pinned beneath him and not even having had a chance for adrenaline to kick in for the other.  

  
She moved her head closer to his. He stretched his neck out to get his face as far away from that as possible. Then, after a quick reconsideration, he scrunched his neck up and turned his face to the side. Peter looked at her out of the corner of his eyes and tried to angle his good hand so that his web-shooter could do something, anything to help, but it was no use. He was going to have to use his other hand, which was still somewhat covered in webs but not nearly enough to protect it from anything. He grabbed the closest thing, one of the bug’s pincers, and tried to push it off him. The insect either refused to budge, or his arm was even more damaged than he initially thought. Peter began to fear that he was about to lose a hand to a giant ant.

  
Just as Liz looked like she was deciding on whether to bite down or not, an arrow flew from somewhere nearby and pierced her eye. Immediately, Peter flung his hand off her pincer and clutched it against his chest with a surprised gasp of air. Liz fell to her side with the force of the impact, still half on top of Peter. Once he regained his senses, he quickly pushed her off and scrambled to his feet.

  
“Thanks a lot, Spidey-sense,” He said while brushing himself off. He took a moment to finally check out his arm. It was worse than he thought, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it now. He rewrapped it in webbing, but this time it served the purpose of a makeshift bandage. “You truly are a treasure, warning me about that sneak attack _and_ that arrow.”

  
He looked down at his suit and stifled a gag. There were blotches spread all over his chest that couldn’t be anything other than part of Liz’s eye. All the way down his arm was his own blood, but at least he was used to that. It wouldn’t be fun to wash the suit when he got home, to say the least. He looked over at her lying on the ground next to him and winced slightly at the sight. Maybe naming these gals wasn’t the best of ideas.

  
Looking around the rest of the street, he saw that the rest of the ants had abandoned whatever they were doing before to help their other little buggy friends out. A few of them were already starting to bite at the webs he’d trapped the PowerPuffs and Magic School Bus gang in. Which meant that they had finally figured out teamwork, and he was incredibly screwed. Well, they weren’t getting too far with the PowerPuffs, but they were almost there with the Magic School Bus gals. Hand to hand with even more ants would not be fun. He also saw where the arrow came from. Hawkeye was perched on a relatively short rooftop and had taken the shot from his vantage point. Peter wouldn’t have noticed he was there unless he’d seen him shoot another arrow, which hit its target dead on, once again in the eye. Iron-Man was still wrangling ants towards someone else who was much further down the street, but Peter couldn’t make out who exactly it was. He just hoped they were nicer than the other two that were here. The three of them seemed to be keeping the ants contained on this street, and picking them off bit by bit as a group, which Peter wished he would’ve been told was the plan. Most of the ants that weren’t in rescue mode, dead or hurt, or already caught were engaged with another hero or still doing that sniffing thing. And every single one of them was making those nightmare-fuel noises. Peter really needed them to stop doing that, like ASAP.

  
“Maybe we should just call an exterminator,” Peter said to himself as he kicked one of the ants that was chewing Ms. Frizzle free in the side. It screeched at him but backed off a little. Unfortunately, that was just so Ms. Frizzle could snap at his calf. He wheeled his leg out of the way and rounded a kick into her side. “Yup, we need an exterminator. Maybe some _Off!_ toOO _OO_ -” He felt a tingle in the back of his neck for the first time since he started fighting these dumb bugs and quickly hopped forward in time to only be nicked by Phoebe. Blood began to trickle down the back of his leg. Peter tried to sweep her legs out from under her. Only her front two legs became unbalanced, but it was enough for her front half to tip towards the ground with the unsupported weight. Peter webbed her to the ground and tried the move on their helper ant, but he learned from Phoebe’s mistakes and dodged. With his foot already underneath the ant, Peter flung it upwards and smacked it hard against the bottom of its head, which flipped it over completely. He breathed a sigh of relief when its legs flailed in an attempt to turn over.

  
Suddenly all of the living ants paused in what they were doing and lifted their heads. As one mass, they turned towards the far end of the street and bolted. Those who were upright or intact assisted the injured and fallen before joining the rest of the bug stampede. Ms. Frizzle took less than a second to flip over the ant that Peter had just kicked. He tried jumping in front of them to stop them but was pushed out of the way with a stronger force than the ants had been using during their fights. It was as if they all had been possessed. _Or mind controlled_ , Peter added as an afterthought. _Villains love mind control._

  
Iron-Man flew off in the direction of the stampede, but Peter couldn’t exactly swing after it with one arm at the speed it was going. He’d have to trust in the Tin-Can and the rest of the Avengers to take care of the rest of them. Besides, he was utterly exhausted. He had a long night of first aid and sewing ahead of him, and he really needed to call Gwen to tell her he didn’t get eaten by giant bugs or something.

  
“Think we should’ve brought in an exterminator?” Peter jumped as Hawkeye appeared from seemingly nowhere. No, not nowhere. Hawkeye isn’t a ghost. He had to have come from somewhere. He just came from somewhere really quietly. Peter really needed to fix his Spidey-sense.

  
“I already made that joke,” Peter replied, waving the man off. Hawkeye shrugged. “And no. I’m more of a catch and release kind of guy.” He gestured to the ants that hadn’t been able to get free. “Unlike you guys.”

  
“Aw.” Hawkeye smirked. “That's cute.”

  
“What?”

  
“That you're upset I killed some bugs. I bet you have some weird one on one connection with insects, don'tcha bug boy?” _We do not punch Avengers, we do not punch Avengers, we do not punch Avengers._

  
“No.” Peter snapped back. He hated being called ‘bug-boy’. “I just don't like killing, period. Especially when they aren't _doing_ anything.”

  
“So what's your definition of doing something, then?” Hawkeye looked around casually at the completely trashed area. “This looks like a whole lot of something to me. This isn’t even where they started, and who knows where that stampede will end up.”

  
He was right. The place was a mess. It’d be more than Peter would probably ever make in his life in property damage. Yet, it still didn’t justify killing the creatures on sight. They might’ve come here by mistake from… wherever giant bugs come from and gotten confused. Or they’re being used by someone for some reason. Peter’s seen a lot of crazy stuff, and dangerous stuff, and he’s never felt the need to use lethal force. That was one of the reasons he didn’t particularly enjoy the Avengers’ methods.

  
“Shouldn’t you be following it too?” Peter said, deciding to at least slightly change the topic. “You know, provide back-up and all that jazz?”

  
“Can’t fly.” Was the simple reply. “Or swing.” Hawkeye added on, shrugging again.

  
Hawkeye then became preoccupied with his comm, effectively ending all conversation between them. He turned his back to Peter and listened intently for a moment to ambient noises of his teammates chasing bugs. Peter rolled his eyes.

  
_Stupid Avengers, with their stupid communication devices. I just love it when they ignore me to talk into their ear. It’s so great when most of the time, I only get half a conversation! And I know no one’s talking to him, he’s just being an ass about it. I’m right next to him. If anyone was talking, I’m close enough to be able to hear it through his communicator. I have enhanced senses, Hawkass._

 _  
_ It took a full two minutes for Hawkeye to start talking to someone, which wouldn’t have been awkward if Peter hadn’t known it was that long. “Most of the ones left over here are downed, but Spidey’s got some live ones stuck in his webs.” Hawkeye said to whoever was now answering on the other side of the line.

  
“Spider-Man? Isn’t this a little bit above what he usually does?”

  
_Excuse you?_   Peter almost said out loud. He recognized the voice as Iron-Man from their last encounter, and it was still just as condescending.

  
“We’re coming back, just make sure you keep them contained,” Said someone else. It was familiar. Then again, all of the Avengers would sound familiar. They were celebrities. It was the eavesdropping through someone else’s comm from several feet away that made the voice hard to place. The only way he could pick out Stark was because the suit made him sound so distinctly robotic.

  
“Are you sure the webbing is going to hold?” It took Peter a second to realize that Hawkeye was actually talking to him again, and not someone over the line. He thought about saying something snarky, then decided against it for diplomacy’s sake. It’s what Gwen and Aunt May would want him to do.

  
“Uh, yeah,” Peter said lamely. “Yeah, pretty sure. As long as they can’t chew through it. Ms. Frizzle and Phoebe got out because some other ants chewed through their webs, and I think the PowerPuffs almost got free too. Wanda and Keesha are stuck in a ball though.”

  
“You _named_ them? After cartoon characters.” Peter did not appreciate the smug look on the archer’s face. “ _Please_ tell me I heard that right.”

  
“I don’t need this right now.”

  
“I knew you were on the young side, but _damn_ , Spidey.”

  
Peter frowned, which only made his mask scrunch up in that weird way that sometimes scared kids. “How on _earth_ does me naming a few giant ants after the PowerPuff Girls and Magic School Bus gals correlate to my age?” After a moment of silence and quiet contemplation, he mumbled, “Okay, I can kind of see how one can maybe connect the two.” Then, louder, “But maybe I just like cartoons, ever think about that?” Peter pointed an accusatory finger at Hawkeye.

  
He was getting a little too worked up, which he always did when someone made fun of his age. He’d just turned eighteen recently, and because he’d always been on the small side for his age he was always mistaken as being younger than he really was. His small frame worked well for him in crime fighting, but not so much in his regular, day-to-day life. Sometimes even villains joked about his age, but at least he could punch them.

  
“Maybe we’ll put some on for you if you come with us to get that checked out,” said the unidentified voice from the comm. Except this time, it wasn’t coming from Hawkeye’s comm. It was coming from behind Peter, and without all that gobbledygook in between his voice and Peter’s ears, it was unmistakable who it was. Peter whipped around to see the Star-Spangled Man himself giving him the once over. “You look rough, son.”

 

All words left Peter and his arms dropped limply to his sides. He just stared for a full minute, basking in the glory of his childhood hero, before realizing how incredibly creepy and weird that was. He quickly ducked his head and felt heat rising up his neck, glad that no one could see his face. He could practically feel the smug look on Hawkeye behind him now. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Captain smile as if he was used to people reacting like that.

 

Then Peter actually registered what the good Captain had said to him. It might have been just a friendly offer for some first aid, or something else entirely. Oh boy, was it tempting. The Avengers probably had an entire infirmary at their disposal. Maybe a doctor. Real painkillers, at least. Ibuprofen just wasn’t cutting it anymore, and it definitely wouldn’t help much with this one. He couldn’t take more than a couple at a time anyways. Aunt May would start to notice. Even if they didn’t have a doctor, they might have someone who could give him real stitches rather than his needle-and-thread, YouTube video ones. But was it as simple and free as it seemed?

 

History said no. Everybody who offered wanted something wanted something, especially people who wanted to help Spider-Man. It’s a give and take, and he really didn’t have much to give these guys. The only thing he could think of that they’d want was his identity, which half of New York was after and nobody was going to get.

 

“Hard pass, Cap,” He shot a webline towards the nearest building with his good hand and pulled himself up. He tried his best to hide the grunt he made when he landed on the roof. The stumble at the top sure didn’t help his image of the capable and independent hero. “Make sure you deal with these guys within the next hour or so!” He called down before swinging away, favoring his left side.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I really didn’t think that through,” Peter muttered quietly, poking at its edges. It would still be another hour or so before it fully dissolved, and if he tried to tear it off without letting it weaken it would hurt. Bad.

Peter waited until he was several streets away before he stopped on a rooftop to make sure no one had followed him. Once he was sure no one was tailing him, he dropped down into an alleyway and did his best to take the backstreet walls and side roofs back. It was slower than swinging, but it was a lot safer and drew less attention. Going back for his bag right after a daylight tussle with some big shots present wasn’t the best of ideas, but everything he owned was in that bag. Even if his phone was just one of those burner flip-phones that you fill up with pre-paid cards and his wallet was practically empty, they were still important. Plus, there was no way he’d be able to explain losing all that stuff again to Aunt May.

After he made it back to the alley where he’d stashed his stuff, Peter hid as best he could behind the side of the dumpster to change. He didn’t think anyone would be out on the streets so soon after what just happened, let alone anyone would come into the alley, but it was better safe than sorry. He pulled his civilian clothes out of his bag, then paused and scrunched his face as he looked down at his arm covered in webbing.

“I really didn’t think that through,” Peter muttered quietly, poking at its edges. It would still be another hour or so before it fully dissolved, and if he tried to tear it off without letting it weaken it would hurt. Bad.

Rather than waste time worrying about it, Peter went ahead and switched pants, removed his right webshooter, and took off both gloves, leaving only his mask and the top half of his costume on. His left webshooter was caught up in the webbing fiasco, but that and the part of his suit he couldn't remove right now would be covered up by his shirt. He only took off his mask after his shirt was on, then shoved everything towards the bottom of the bag.

Peter tried his best to pull his shirt into a position where nothing would show underneath, but he kept having to adjust his sleeves due to the added bulk. He could try to pass the costume off as some sort of undershirt, but the makeshift bandage was tricky. If anyone asked him about it, he'd say it was covering up something really embarrassing. Like a rash. He positioned his arms and the strap of his bag to hide the parts his shirt couldn’t as best he could, and for once prayed that New York would be filled with its usual, uncaring citizens.

Looking a little less like a costumed freak, and a little more like a normal teenaged freak, Peter exited the alleyway. Head down, he walked as fast as he could with his slight limp. He was aware that every action was slightly suspicious, but only on the 'I was just buying and/or selling drugs in that alleyway I just came from' level, not the 'I'm a costumed vigilante fleeing the scene of a fight' level. Usually, Peter would duck into a big crowd of people after he changed. People almost always came out a reasonable amount of time after something big happened, mostly just to stare at the mess that was left behind. This time, the streets around him were practically deserted by city standards, and it took a while for foot traffic to pick up. It was harder to blend into the crowd with no crowd around, but Peter still tried to look as normal as possible when he ducked down side streets for shortcuts.

Peter rode the subway most of the way home. None of the other passengers looked at him twice. If they thought he looked strange, no one said anything. The subway was a little less packed than usual, but Peter still had to stand. When the doors opened, he did his best not to run onto the platform and out into the street. He settled for a brisk walk in the direction of his house and a few glares at some too-nosy neighbors.

Peter lived with his Aunt May in Queens. Their home was small but cozy. It looked like the other houses around them, except someone had taken either side in their hands and smushed it together. Although it lacked in width, it had two stories to make up for it. The back-yard wasn’t massive, but it was there. The window to Peter’s room was not in clear view of any neighbors, or the street, which allowed him to sneak in and out with less chance of prying eyes. Their neighbors usually weren't awfully intrusive, but they still made any odd comings and goings of the teenagers around them their business. Peter never had a problem, since he usually came and went in the middle of the night.

Peter had lived in that house ever since he could remember. He grew up there with his aunt and uncle after his parents' deaths. His afternoons were spent playing in the backyard and along the street, he helped burn his first pie in that kitchen, and whenever he got scared as a kid he’d climb out of his bed and climb into theirs. After Uncle Ben died, he and his aunt both made a conscious decision to stay in the house. Too many memories had seeped into the walls, and no amount of tragedy could destroy those. They couldn’t really afford to move, anyways. Eventually, it became an unusual and unsettling sort of normalcy with just the two of them in a much quieter house.

Aunt May was always a goddess living among men. When Uncle Ben was around, she was a lively homebody. Now she had just as much fire as ever, but was home a lot less. She cooked and cleaned, but also worked any and every shift she could get, morning or night, without complaint. Even though they were having money troubles, which she didn’t want to worry Peter with in the first place, she still didn’t want him to get a part-time job. Peter helped around the house or tried to help with bills whenever he could, but ever since he started super-heroing, he hadn’t been able to as much as he’d like to. He spent more time washing the blood out of his suit or fixing his webshooters than helping with chores or even working on his homework these days. Most of the money he made went to the supplies for web-fluid, seeing as he couldn’t exactly ask anyone else to buy it for him.

Aunt May’s odd work schedule was impossible to memorize due to her constantly picking up shifts whenever possible. Being a nurse, she can practically sniff out an injury that when he tried to deal with it himself, especially when it's a bad one. Last year, Peter had to come up with a convoluted story about skating too close to some construction and falling on some rebar pipes to cover for this nasty gash she saw on his side. Her keen eyes for the slightest changes make her the greatest aunt in the world, but they also put her on top of the ‘Avoid at All Costs’ list right after a big fight.

That was the reason why he carefully creaked the front door of his house open and peeked his head in to look around before stepping inside the door. Thankfully, when Peter opened the door the lights were off and the entire house silent. Aunt May was probably still at work, and when he walked inside and turned on the lights, he saw a note on the table that confirmed it.

_Went to work. Have fun today!_

_Will be back at 5(ish)._

_There’s some leftovers in the fridge._

Peter glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost two now. Hopefully he’d be able to get everything done before Aunt May got home, but he’d have to book it. He rushed straight up the stairs towards his room. Items were strewn across the floor, the bed was messily tossed back together, but the desk in the corner was somewhat neat. He tip-toed over a pair of jeans and some textbooks that were left by the foot of his bed in his morning rush and carelessly tossed his bag onto his desk. As he wheeled around and walked back out into the hallway, he went straight to the bathroom across the hall. He flipped on the lights and shut the door behind him. A click echoed across the tile as the lock on the door turned into place.

When he turned and looked in the mirror, Peter saw messy hair, a pale face, and his Spidey-suit peeking out from underneath the collar of his shirt. Before he could do anything to fix his arm, he’d have to get all that webbing off. He rolled up the pant leg on the side where Phoebe had nipped at him. There was a little bit of a blood stain on his pants. It looked more like he’d picked at a scab on the back of his leg. He decided that it could still go in with the rest of the laundry.

Bracing himself against the edge of the counter, Peter put most of his weight on his good arm and pulled his legs up, one after the other. He moved from crouching awkwardly on the marble countertop into a standing position, then stood on the tips of his toes and reached up towards the vent in the ceiling. After wiggling the cover free, he reached in and pulled out a tightly wrapped bundle. He put the vent down on the counter next to him and plopped down next to the sink, letting his leg twist out so the back of his calf was facing him.

Inside the bundle was all the supplies Peter usually needed to patch himself up, like scissors, a spool of thread and a needle, a couple of over-the-counter pain meds, and the last of a roll of gauze he snatched from Aunt May’s first aid kit a while back, all wrapped in some washcloths. When he had first started out, he didn’t realize the importance of knowing how to perform first aid on oneself. That changed immediately. It took several times of him coming home, a mess from a crook or a villain, to realize the importance of keeping his stash well-stocked all the time. The only reason he kept his stash and didn’t use his Aunt’s first aid kit was that whenever he took too much from the house, she tended to notice.

Peter eased his shirt off, noticing the small stains of deep red that were poking through the fabric. He balled it up and tossed it onto the counter beside the sink, then poked at the webbing on his arm. He could feel parts of it on skin. It had loosened up in the time it took him to get home, but it was still going to hurt. He picked up the scissors from the bundle and tried wedging them between it and his skin to see if it would separate anymore.

_Like a Band-Aid,_ Peter thought. _A horribly designed Band-Aid._

Peter clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth to keep himself from crying out in pain when he began to pick at the edge. Steeling his resolve, he grit his teeth and gripped it firmly before ripping it off in one move. A loud hiss escaped him as he dropped the field bandage and grabbed at his arm in a knee-jerk reaction.

The mass of webbing was curling in on itself on the counter. Pieces of his suit had come off with it, as had small bits of skin. The inside of the webbing was soaked, and so was Peter’s hand when he finally pulled it away from his arm. Cursing underneath his breath, he grabbed his washcloth and pressed it against his arm.

It didn’t take long for the bleeding to stop, but now he had something else to wash before Aunt May got home. He carefully unclipped his webshooter and peeled off his wrecked costume top. He turned his webshooter over in his hand, grimacing more at the damage to it than to his arm. Fixing those, or in the absolute worst case building a new one, wasn’t cheap. He placed both it and his suit to the side before assessing his arm.

The cuts were deep and jagged. None of them were pretty, and all of them would take some work to clean out and stitch up. The cut that ran all the way up his arm was without a doubt the worst of the three, but the one that worried him the most was the one on his hand. When he tried to curl his hand into a fist, he felt a stabbing pain and a distinct throbbing that he was sure would be there long after he relaxed it. No sucker punches for at least a few days, then. There were two major wounds were more of one big bite mark than two separate cuts. They were on opposite sides of his arm from each other. One extended all the way towards his elbow, while the other was less than half that size and far less deep.

Bruises were something Peter could handle. He’d been getting bruises, black-eyes, and split-lips long before he got his powers. Seeing them a little more after he started putting on the suit never bothered him. What made Peter’s stomach turn was the injuries like these. The gunshot wounds, the lacerations, the broken bones that he set into place by himself, all the stuff that you would normally go to a hospital for. They didn’t turn him away from doing what he did, and they sure as heck didn’t scare him as much anymore, but he would never get used to the surreal feeling of putting himself back together in the bathroom he shares with his Aunt after someone ripped him into pieces as Spider-Man.

Hydrogen Peroxide was almost the worst part. It burned, but it distracted him from the first prick of the needle. After that he felt every stab. Pulling tight on the string, the two sides of the wound began to slide closer together at the cost of any remaining comfort. Peter sucked in a breath and soldiered on with his sewing needle and thread in a zig-zag motion along the entire length of the first cut. At the end, he cut the thread and tied it off with a practiced hand, then moved on to the other two. With all three stitched together, Peter tried to determine whether there was any way he could inconspicuously bandage them. Deciding that, no, he’d just have to stick to long sleeves until he could pull out the stitches, he took the gauze and a small amount of medical tape and bandaged each one with the smallest amount possible. The roll was almost empty. Add that to the list of infinite things he’d have to pick up, along with spandex and scrap for his webshooter.

Next Peter had to deal with the smaller cut on his leg. He washed off his leg, trying his best not to stain his pants any further than they already were. Right now, he could claim it was a picked scab that caused the stain. When he could finally see it clearly, he saw that the cut wasn’t big enough that his leg had to be wrapped. He could use one of the big bandages for it, which he was also in shortening supply of.

The very last thing Peter did was take the pain meds and put a few in his pants pocket. They weren’t anything strong, just some over-the-counter stuff, but they were better than nothing. He wanted to take more so he wouldn’t have to feel every movement in his arm like needles pricking his skin. Then again, dulling a small amount and rationing them for longer periods was better than not having them at all when stuff like this came up. The issue was that he was running out and couldn’t exactly buy the amount he needed legally without being flagged by the police.

After wiping down the counter and tossing his trash, Peter regarded himself in the mirror. _Only long sleeves for a while._

All Peter really needed was an excuse for the obvious bandage on his hand, but that was a Future Peter problem. Present Peter had about a half dozen other things to worry about. He had shoved his bundle of goodies back into the vent it came from and was already rushing back to his room with all his Spidey gear in hand. He grabbed the bottom of his backpack, gingerly using his other hand to unzip it, and dumped all the contents out into a messy pile. Shoving most of the contents to one side, he grabbed the other half of his costume and his right webshooter from the pile and put them in the middle of his desk. He sunk down into his uncomfortable office chair and flipped on his desk lamp, making a note to Febreze his bag before he used it again.

Under the light of his desk lamp, he could see the casing of his webshooter was riddled with dents. Although some were from previous fights and wouldn’t mess with the functionality, a couple of the larger dents looked like they could be pushing on the circuitry inside. Peter didn’t want to risk testing it and having it short-circuit, only to create more work in the end. The plastic that kept the cartridge in place had bent inward. He was lucky it hadn’t busted after all. He wouldn’t be able to put a new one in, and it’d be tough to get it out. Not impossible, though. With the use of tweezers and some careful maneuvering, he was able to plop the cartridge into his desk drawer after a couple of minutes. Then he set the webshooter aside, promising himself he would deal with it later.

He pulled the suit forward. It wasn’t looking great, but it was salvageable. A patch on the leg and a new sleeve was really all it needed this time around. It sure wouldn’t look great, but it’d be cheaper than having to make a new one. Peter was glad it hadn’t gotten ripped anywhere irreplaceable. Washing it before doing any kind of modifying was a good idea, considering the blue was starting to turn purple from all the red.

Peter took the bundle of fabric that included his entire costume, his shirt from the day, and the bloodstained washcloth and ran them all through the washing machine at the same time. Every two minutes he glanced around the corner for any sign that Aunt May was coming home early. Ten minutes into the cycle, he finally relaxed. He stepped away from the machine to get a snack and had his nose stuck in the fridge when the landline rang. It wasn’t picked up until Peter had a pudding in hand.

“Hello?” 

“Peter?”

“Mhm,” He said through a spoonful of pudding. “Speaking.” The other side of the line was silent, but Peter thought he heard what sounded like a sigh of relief.

“Are you okay?” Peter now recognized Gwen’s voice as the one on the other side of the line. There was a slight waver in her voice.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” He said. “Why?”

“That’s good. That’s really good,” Gwen said, not sounding the least bit relieved. “Now I can yell at you for not calling me _or_ answering any of my calls, _you absolute moron._ ”

“That seems a little uncalled for.”

“Does it? You’re all over the news, Pete,” Gwen whisper-shouted. “Someone from inside a building got cellphone video of you engaged in fisticuffs with _giant ants._ Do you know how dumb that is?”

“Well, when you put it like that-“

“That’s the only way to put it! You fought barroom style with a bug. There’s no way you’re ‘ _Fine, thanks!_ ’ after that.” Peter took another spoonful of pudding while he waited for Gwen to finish. “The Avengers were there too, and I know that you don’t like them but I’d rather you work with jerks than get hurt.”

Peter waited for a second to make sure it was his turn to talk this time. When a few had passed in silence, he spoke up. “I’m sorry I made you worry.” He said. “But I can handle myself out there.”

He didn’t know how much he wanted to tell her. She’d find out about his injuries in one way or another when he saw her again. She’d know where the hand injury really came from, no matter what he said to cover for it. Peter ate another spoonful of pudding and made a decision.

“You’re right, I didn’t totally walk away unhurt,” He said. “But I already dealt with it. I didn’t pick up your calls because I was a little busy with the stitches.”

“You gave yourself stitches?” Gwen asked, her voice increasing in pitch slightly. “I don’t take anything back, you’re a _major_ idiot.”

Peter heard the _DING!_ of the washing machine behind him. He threw the shirt and washcloth into the dryer with another load. The suit smelled like lavender and was dripping wet when he pulled it out, but he opted not to stick it in the dryer and instead began to run upstairs to hang it in the back of his closet to air dry. With it bundled up in both of his arms, he held the cordless phone between his ear and his shoulder. “My options are more than a little limited at this point. I do the sutures myself, or not at all.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“What?” Peter was thrown off guard.

“Look,” Gwen said matter-of-factly. “I can’t help with the heroing and what-not, but you’re not going to not do it and you’ll keep getting hurt. I’m also not going to let you die from septic shock because you did your own sutures.” Peter glanced down at his arm and gulped. “What can I do to help?”

He sat down at his desk and thought for a moment. “Painkillers, definitely. If I die of an infection, I don’t want it to hurt too bad.”

“You’re an ass, Peter,” Gwen said. Peter would’ve been offended if he hadn’t heard the laughter in her voice. “So, Tylenol? Ibuprofen?”

“That’ll work. If you can bring an entire bottle, that’d be swell.” Peter was trying to think ahead as much as possible. Not only did it take more of the average painkiller to dull his aches, but he could tough it out with a little pain and keep some of the rest for future scrapes and bruises.

“No one says swell anymore, Pete,” She said. “I’ll try to bring as much as I can Monday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapters for more frequent posts?  
> Or same length and about the same time frame between posts (1 every month or so)?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “All signs point to this being the last point in their little marathon,” Tony said.  
> “Here? Why not pick an abandoned warehouse?” Clint kicked a pipe out of his way.  
> “Ants can’t tell when they’re being cliché.” Tony shot back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter on what the Avengers did after Peter left. Back to Peter next chapter.

When the woman in a dark pantsuit and sunglasses arrived on scene and walked past the barricade, the SHIELD agents were already busy at work. Silently, she stood with arms crossed and watched as they assessed damages, took stock of the bugs for transport and disposal, and tended to the injured. She waved one of the response team over to her.

  
“Ah, Agent Johnson! Nice to see a friendly face on the ground for once. There’ve been far too many overly morose field operatives. All black suits and ice-cold expressions.” He smiled at her, wiping a gloved hand on his coat before extending it to her. She flicked her eyes down at it, then back up at his face. The smile wasn’t returned. After a moment's awkwardness, he dropped it. “Always a pleasure, you are, Agent Johnson.”

  
“Enough with the pleasantries, Mickey,” She said. “Report.”

  
Mickey chuckled, unperturbed by his colleague. “Well, as far as these things go, it's not too much of a mess. One man, the owner of a store who attempted to block the window, wound up with a large shard of glass lodged in his forearm. He is currently being treated, along with others for minor cuts and bruises they seem to have gotten while trying to hide. Luckily, no life-threatening injuries. It seems like they were all able to get out of the way before the brunt of the attack.”

  
He took a breath and continued his report. “Minor structural damage to the buildings in the cordoned off area, mostly shattered windows and an overturned kiosk. Several totaled cars, a flipped bus, and a lot of personal property destroyed. The street is mostly intact, but it took damage from what is reported as a stampede. As our hypothesis currently goes, they left the dead and soon to be dead behind. We do however have several live ones on the ground, and a few holding units are en route for them. Past experience with the same substance tells us that it will hold for anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half. Depends on the batch, really.”

  
“Then let’s hope it’s a good one,” Johnson said. “What’s this about a stampede? I thought we were dealing with a hive of modified ants.”

  
“We still are. Initial data is telling us that their structure is very close to normal ants, aside from the obvious. Anything else we’d need a lab for.” Mickey answered. “Bigger issue is that they disappeared suddenly.” When the agent raised her eyebrows, he continued. “The team is considering the possibility of a teleportation device used by whoever controlled the ants, but nothing’s concrete.”

  
Agent Johnson flared her nostrils in an almost imperceptible way. “Nothing is ever concrete with your team.” Before Mickey protest, she shot off another question. “The team of Avengers that were on scene are still in the immediate vicinity, correct?”

  
“Yes,” Mickey answered. “As soon as the first response team arrived, they shot off to look for the stampede. But how did you-”

  
“Deductive reasoning,” She said, waving his question off. There was no need to let him know that she was always sent a basic file when she was sent to a location, and only used a field report as an excuse to talk. Johnson fiddled with the buttons on the side of her watch until a rectangular hologram appeared from the face. It was a screen of coded contacts and frequencies, and she scrolled along it until she found the correct one.

  
“There’s absolutely no way Stark is going to pick up!” Mickey called over his shoulder as he walked back to the dead ant he had been scraping up.

  
“I’m not calling Stark,” Johnson muttered.

 

 

The trail of wreckage stopped so abruptly that Stark flew over the area twice, then had JARVIS scan it a third time before he was entirely sure they were in the right area. There were no signs of life within the range of the scan, but they were around where the colony, or whatever it was, last ended up. Whether the lack of life signs was a good thing or not was still up for debate.

  
They had moved from a sprinkle of relatively small businesses mixed in with the monotones of the stacked office buildings, to a nearby construction zone. Chopped asphalt started to replace slightly worn city streets, then they came to what could only be described as debris field a block wide and surrounded by chunky gravel. It was blocked off by a chain-link fence. The nine-foot-tall boundary looked like it worked well enough at keeping the usual partying teen or average vandal out of the lot. It wasn’t going to do well with an entire section of the chain-link ripped apart.

  
Tony landed with a _CRUNCH!_ On the edge of the gravelly lot. He watched as Steve and Clint cautiously stepped beyond the ripped metal and into the area. Steve’s shield was lowered, but still at the ready.

  
“All signs point to this being the last point in their little marathon,” Tony said.

  
“Here? Why not pick an abandoned warehouse?” Clint kicked a pipe out of his way.

  
“Ants can’t tell when they’re being cliché.” Tony shot back. The place was a wreck. It was hard to tell if something was due to the stampede that came through or just looked that way beforehand. He saw the confused look on Steve’s face, and as if to answer a question said, “The entire place has been locked up since construction stopped a few months ago. Company in charge went bankrupt, city never refiled the contract. Crews stopped work one day right in the middle of demolishing some very old and very smashed buildings to build new, reinforced ones that would hopefully better withstand New York’s daily troubles. No one even came back to get the equipment.” The confusion cleared off Steve’s face.

  
“Maybe they nest here? Not a lot of activity to interfere,” Steve asked.

  
“If any of them were here, then I’d have picked them up on the scan,” Tony replied.

  
“Are you sure they were real? Real ants, I mean?”

  
“Pretty sure that gunk that got in the joints of my suit was not synthetic.”

  
“Pretty sure isn’t one hundred percent,” Steve said. He slowly looked around before his eyes flicked back to the construction equipment. He furrowed his brow. Something felt off.

  
“I was going to look at it later with Bruce anyways, see what kind of genetic modifications whoever made these things stuck in,” Tony said stubbornly. Steve already started walking towards the equipment. “You don’t have to tell me to do stuff I’m already obviously going to do, Oh Mighty Captain.”

  
“Mm,” Was Steve’s response. He stopped at the front of one of the excavators, where a large hole had been dug. “Tony, I need you over here.”

  
“Ah, yes. A hole at a construction site.”

  
“A fresh hole at an abandoned construction site.”

  
Clint pushed past Tony and ran to where Steve was standing. He let out a low whistle, which turned into a short bark of a laugh. Steve stashed his shield on his back and Clint put away his bow. “Yeah, you’re definitely going to want to see this.”

  
The hole wasn’t particularly big, but it was massively deep. At some point in its depths, the sunlight that was pouring down gave up and just let the darkness win. They had no way of knowing whether it turned off in a different direction, or kept going down, down, and down some more. At least, not unless they were willing to go down it.

  
Sure, that was _possible_. It was wide enough to fit each of them individually if they went one at a time. The problem was that only Stark had the ability to fly, and the ants would know he was coming through their tunnel from far enough away to either attack or run. Either option didn’t look good for the trio.

  
“Now we know where they all went,” Clint sighed.

  
“Yeah, but this just creates a ton of issues,” Tony said. “Like the fact that they hid their entry point on an abandoned construction site, near digging equipment. No one comes in here, and if they saw it from the outside they’d just think it was a normal part of the construction that was left in a stasis, like everything else on the lot.”

  
“That brings up a question.” Steve looked down at the hole and scrunched his eyebrows together. “How long has this been here?”

  
“Whoa, whoa.” Clint held up his hands. “Are we really thinking that these things came up through this hole from _wherever_ they’ve been coming from before today? That’s impossible. We would’ve heard about it, at the very least. Somebody would’ve seen them.”

  
“Not necessarily. This suggests that at the very least someone with the ability to strategize and plan ahead is controlling these creatures.” Tony turned on the light located in his armor’s gauntlet and shined it down into the hole. Despite the intensity of the light, the darkness below refused to take a dent. “ _Damn it_. It must turn out farther down.”

  
The tension was broken when Steve's wrist let out one, two, three curt beeps before vibrating in a rhythm. Immediately, everyone’s attention turned to him as he slyly tried to conceal it beneath his other hand and make the sound less noticeable. Finally, he gave in and rolled up his sleeve slightly to be able to reach his unwillingly modified watch. It usually kept time, but when he needed to, he could use it to contact Agents and Avengers somewhat easily. Everyone saw the symbol first, and he heard Tony audibly groan.

  
“Don’t you dare answer that,” Tony said, pointing a finger in his direction almost threateningly.

  
Steve accepted the call without a second thought, ignoring the huff from Tony’s direction.

  
“Captain Rogers,” said a woman’s voice over his comm device. “This is Agent Johnson. We appreciate you actually calling us this time, rather than leaving us to see it on the 5 o’clock news.”

  
“Is that all you called to say?"

  
“I was just giving Mr. Stark a little time to hop in on the conversation.” Steve’s eyes widened a fraction and he looked at Tony.

  
“Johnson, was it?” Tony asked. “You don’t have to be so nice next time.”

  
“I need a full report on the attack from the three of you, as well as a report on your search. If you have anything immediately pertinent, then share.”

  
“We’re currently at an abandoned construction site that you’ll want to cordon off. It appears to be an entry and exit point for these things.”

  
“Send the coordinates and head home to prepare for a complete briefing. We can take it from here, boys.”

  
“Hold up,” Tony said.

  
“Yes, Mr. Stark?” Johnson asked, her annoyance barely peaking through. 

  
“What are you going to do with the live ants?”

  
“Classified, Mr. Stark. If we need your assistance on it, we’ll call you.” The line went dead.

  
“Unbelievable,” Tony muttered.

  
“Really? Which part? Because SHIELD taking everything seems pretty believable to me.” Clint half smiled.

  
“That's why I didn't want to call them! Now all I have to work with is what's on us. _Literally._ "

  
“And how, exactly, were you expecting us to both look for this,” Steve pointed at the hole next to them. “And keep them contained long enough to move them to a secure facility? And where would you have kept them? The tower? They can chew through metal, Tony. Could your labs handle that?” Steve crossed his arms, waiting for some form of an answer. It didn’t come. He sighed. “You heard the woman. They can handle the rest, and if they need us, they’ll call.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monday was a whirlwind of dull aching, slight throbbing, and sharp pains. When Peter got to school that morning, he made a joke to Gwen that he could at least still take notes. She smacked him (lightly).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt bad the last chapter was super short, so I'm posting this a little earlier than planned. Hope you enjoy!

Monday was a whirlwind of dull aching, slight throbbing, and sharp pains. When Peter got to school that morning, he made a joke to Gwen that he could at least still take notes. She smacked him (lightly). Thankfully, she pulled through on her promise to bring the painkillers. She brought a gloriously full, unopened bottle of Ibuprofen and half a bottle of Tylenol. Peter took double the recommended dose of Tylenol and stuffed them both at the bottom of his bookbag.

  
Halfway through first period, he realized that he wouldn’t be taking any notes. Even with the Tylenol, the only thing he could concentrate on was the constant _ache, throb, ache, jolt,_ sensation that was now running up his entire arm. At lunch, he snuck out from the tyrannical thumb of a worried Gwen and to the boys’ bathroom, so he could sneak a peek at what was happening underneath the bandage. Maybe he ripped his stitches that morning when he changed his bandage. Maybe nothing was going wrong and he just needed to take six Tylenol with each dose instead of four. Oh, boy, his supply was not going to last.

  
Hiding in the stall the farthest from the door, Peter sat on the tank of the toilet and rolled up his sleeve. So far, nothing looked too out of the ordinary, other than the obvious. He peeled back the edge of the bandage and his eyes widened. The area around the wound was red, swollen, and throbbing.

  
It’s infected. Was his first thought. He quickly dismissed that. He’d kept it clean, and had stitched it almost right after he was injured. No way it was infected. He put the bandage back in place, washed his hands as best he could, then returned to lunch.

  
_Give it a day,_ Peter convinced himself. _It’ll fix itself up, no problem. And I’ll switch to the Ibuprofen._

  
That night, he took enough Ibuprofen to make his Aunt faint, but only dull the pain to a mere constant ache, and spent several hours patching his suit by dim lamplight.

  
On Tuesday, Peter ignored his arm and trudged through each of his classes. He forced himself to focus on anything else. What the teacher said, what he was going to have for lunch, the pencils of his classmates’ _scratch-scratch-scratching_ across their papers. Anything would do, so long as the throbbing wasn’t on his mind. Lunch came and went, and he seemed to be succeeding.

  
Then came third period chemistry with Flash Thompson.

  
The practice of teachers assigning the best in the class with the average or lower average students, so they can help each other is what landed Peter with Flash as a lab partner. Most days he suffered through the Morning Welcome, the Lunchroom Special, and the Classroom Conflict. When he was obviously in a lot of pain, Flash left him alone for the most part. Something about beating a dead horse. Monday, when Peter was in too much of a stupor to even listen to the teacher, was a Flash-Free day. Today wasn’t so lucky.  
Flash smacked Peter hard in the back. It looked like a friendly pat on the outside, but it was an attempt to knock him way off balance. Usually, it wouldn’t have worked, but today it had Peter gripping the side of the lab station with both hands. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from yelling out and flipped over his left had to see if any stitches were pulled. He really didn’t need to come home with it bleeding and explain to Aunt May how it was not, in fact, a very small cut from a kitchen knife used to cut the lasagna and she was out of tiny bandages.

  
“ _Ouch,_ ” Flash said mockingly. “Sorry ’bout that.”

  
“S’okay,” Peter said, grinding his teeth.

  
Every time the teacher turned her back, he dealt with Flash’s antics. Everything he did ranged from childish to mean, but so long as it didn’t hurt, Peter could take it for ninety minutes. He would ball up pieces of paper and toss them at his head whenever he turned to get something or walked across the room. At one point he borrowed a pencil, then purposefully broke it in half before returning it with a half-hearted shrug. The worst of it came when Flash’s hand “slipped” and half of their experiment ended up him and his notebook towards the end of the class.

  
Peter wasn’t in any mood to clean it up, but still he trudged to the bathroom with a soaking sweatshirt and a dripping spiral notebook. He opened the notebook to see if it could be salvaged, only to see it was soaked through. Since they were illegible, he dumped the whole thing in the trash-can next to the sink before grabbing some paper towels to wipe himself off. Not once did he roll up his sleeve and peek underneath the bandage, afraid of what he would see.

  
Wednesday was the breaking point. Peter woke up before his alarm went off, not on purpose. He rolled out of bed and to the bathroom, his arm stiff and throbbing. He rolled up his sleeve and sighed. Already, it looked a lot worse since Monday. He carefully peeled back the bandages to look at the stitches and saw that it had only gotten redder. It was still healing despite the infection, and there wasn’t anything oozing from it. Oozing would’ve been a very, very bad thing.

  
He hadn’t totally messed up yet.

  
He’d have to figure out how to deal with an infection without antibiotics. Going to a doctor was way out of the question, and it wasn’t like they had any spares in the house. When either of them were prescribed any, Aunt May made sure they finished out the course. Good for their immune system, terrible for his superhero needs.

  
Googling the problem resulted in nothing aside from the obvious of keeping it clean, and the smarter decision of going to a doctor. That was not going to happen. In a move of genius proportions, he looked into what doctors did before antibiotics were a thing. He didn’t want to try bloodletting or any weird herbal remedies, not that he had any herbs to mess with in the first place. The deeper he went into alternative methods, the more looking for leeches in the Hudson sounded like a feasible plan. Aside from growing his own penicillin, he didn’t have many options.

  
Peter glanced at the clock. “Shit.” He launched himself from his desk chair and rushed to get ready. He hopped on one foot in the dark pulling on his pants and struggled to pull his shirt over his head as fast as possible. As he flew down the stairs with one shoe on, planning to put the other on when he got on the porch, he caught a glimpse of Aunt May in the kitchen. “Bye Aunt May have to go I’m late!” He blurted out before flinging open the door.

  
“One minute!” She jogged over to Peter as he pulled his other shoe on, half hopping, half jogging in front of the door. “Give me a kiss goodbye.”

  
“Oh my God,” He huffed.

  
“Don’t _’Oh my God’_ me. I won’t be home until late tonight and I want a goodbye kiss.” She said matter-of-factly, with one hand placed “Right here, on my cheek.” She turned her head and presented it to him. He gave her a small peck. “Alright, go.”

  
“I’m already late!” Peter groaned as he ran out the door.

 

  
  
Peter avoided Gwen that morning. He knew she would be able to tell that something was wrong, and he didn’t know if he wanted to tell her. He had no idea what to do, or if there was anything he could do. Letting nature run its course might be the only way to play this one. Then again, that was a really great way to lose a hand.

  
In the classes they shared, it was a little harder. He had to play it off like he was paying an incredible amount of attention and really couldn’t divide it up to talk to her. This wasn’t a lie, exactly. He was paying an incredible amount of attention to the lecture so he could avoid thinking about his other problems. It still made him feel bad.

  
When lunchtime came around, she was like an unavoidable beast, demanding to be talked to, to be spoken with, all around refusing to be ignored. When she sat down and all but slammed her lunch tray on their table, Peter swallowed the half-chewed piece of sandwich in his mouth and held up one finger, cutting her off before she could get out a single piercing question. Gwen snapped her mouth shut and scrunched up her entire face.

  
“Yes, I’ve been avoiding you. Yes, I’m going to talk to you about it. Not here. Under the bleachers in the football field.” Peter said, biting another piece off the sandwich, chewing a bit, then swallowing.

  
“Under the bleachers? The place that got fenced off since kids used to go smoke there instead of going to class?” She asked quietly.

  
“Yeah. I know a way in,” Peter answered. “Me and Harry used to eat lunch there sometimes.”

  
Gwen rubbed her arm awkwardly. “Sorry.”

  
Peter shrugged. “Grab your stuff and let’s go.”

  
Peter led Gwen out of the cafeteria and through one of the school’s side doors. When Gwen started towards the football field, he grabbed her and led her around the other way. In a minute or two, they were at the back gate to the ticket stand, which was only open and manned on game nights. It was also located in the parking lot behind the bleachers, and was attached to one of the gates on the fence that surrounded the area beneath them. Peter walked inside the ticket stand and opened the back door, then waved at Gwen from behind the fence.

  
“Wait, it’s that easy?” She asked, dumbfounded.

  
“Mhm,” Peter said as he closed the door behind them. “Everyone always thought the school would keep it locked, but they don’t since there’s nothing in here of value. Not even game tickets.”

  
“How’d you figure that out?”

  
“I didn’t.” Peter sat down on one of the concrete protrusions. “Look, I still don’t know if I want to tell you about this, but I have no idea how to handle this one. Just don’t freak out.”

  
“I’ve handled things well so far,” Gwen said.

  
Peter took a deep breath before he unwrapped his bandages. He had taken more Ibuprofen that morning during his search around the web, so it was less stiff and red, and just a tiny bit less swollen. That didn’t mean it didn’t look bad.

  
“Ew.”

  
“That’s all you have to say? _Ew?_ ”

  
“What do you want me to say? It looks gross.” Gwen narrowed her eyes and leaned in a little closer.

  
“It’s _infected!_ ” Peter nearly hissed. 

  
“No, duh,” Gwen sat down next to him. She laid the bandages across her lap, used side up, then moved Peter’s arm onto them. He sucked in a breath at her touch. “If you wanted me to confirm that, you could’ve just used google. This looks awful Pete. It doesn’t look like there’s any pus.” She pursed her lips and looked at him.

  
“Don’t say it,” He held up a finger with his good hand. “Don’t you dare say it.”

  
“You need a doctor.”

  
“I said don’t say it!”

  
“Pete, look at your arm!” She gestured to it wildly and he flinched, afraid she might touch it on accident in her fervor. “I am not a doctor! Neither of us has any training in any sort of medicine! You’ve done the best you could do, now you need to find someone to help you.”

  
Peter sighed. “Gwen… You know I can’t do that.” The two sat in silence for a solid moment.

  
“Then I don’t know why you told me about this,” Gwen finally said. “You need antibiotics, and for that, you have to…” Gwen trailed off, losing herself in thought. Then she perked her head up in a sudden revelation. “Oh my God. Antibiotics.”

  
“Yeah, things that I don’t have. I’d have to go to a licensed doctor to get some,” Peter said. “Not an option.”

  
“You don’t have any, but I do!” Gwen said. “I have no idea if they’ll work, but they have to be better than taking nothing, right?”

  
“It’s not stuff you’re taking right now, is it?” Peter asked, trying to carefully word his question.

  
“Not at all. We’ll stop by my place after school and pick it up,” Gwen said. As Gwen helped him rewrap his bandaged, Peter didn’t know whether the sinking feeling in his stomach was a symptom or a gut feeling.

 

   
  
After school, the pair hurried to Gwen’s house. She moved to a house much closer to the school after her mom died so it would be easier on her dad. She unlocked the front door and let him inside. He cautiously looked around, frozen like a deer in headlights.

  
Gwen laughed at him. “Don’t worry, my dad’s not home.”

  
“But how do you know?” Peter questioned.

  
“He texts me when he thinks he’s coming home early,” Gwen said. “And he never texts me.”

  
She led him to the downstairs bathroom. Peter respectfully waited outside the open door as she riffled through her medicine cabinet, looking for the right bottle. Once she found it, she stood in the doorway and tossed it to him. “There you have it.”

  
He turned the bottle around so he could read the label. “Cipro? Am I allowed to ask what this is for?”

  
Gwen thought about it for a second. “It was for a UTI. Doctor called and said I didn’t actually have a UTI, so I stopped taking it. Dad doesn’t know it’s still in there.”  
Peter’s felt his face turn some shade of red. Considering life with his Aunt and how open she was about everything... “So, uh, how- how old are they?”

  
“About six months.”

  
“ _Six months?_ ” Peter repeated incredulously.

  
“It’s not like we have any other options here!” Peter stared down at the child-proof bottle in his hand. “I can put them back if you don’t want them.” He picked at the label that was already starting to peel off. No wonder it took her so long to find it. Six months of whatever else goes in the cabinet would’ve pushed it to the back.

  
“It’s this or I’m dragging you to a doctor, Petey.”

  
Peter twirled off the cap, poured out one of the pills, and popped it in his mouth.

 

Peter then gagged at the taste on his tongue and begged for a glass of water.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should I spy? No. Peter thought. Will I spy? Yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, there is a little grossness in this chapter.

On the edge of a rooftop sat a shivering figure clad in a red and blue suit covered in patches and mismatched stitches. Huddled against the biting fall wind, Peter crouched low on the ledge with shoulders hunched and his face pressed into the screen of his flip phone. Although he had made it a habit to come home long before dawn after getting caught by his Aunt one too many times, setting an alarm before going on patrol never hurt the cause.

After he took the pill that night at Gwen’s house, he waited exactly one more day before going out as Spider-Man. Waiting that long between patrols made him antsy, but Peter knew his limits. If he went out hurting, any old crook could nick him on his left side and take him down with a friend or two. More than once, Peter’s overeagerness to get back out there lead to him being down for the count longer. He was able to get back to the people that needed him faster if he just stayed back for a little bit in the first place. Since he’d given it a couple days and had an ample supply of painkillers, he was willing to take the risk, infection be damned. Unfortunately, that infection was why Peter was still sitting on top of the rooftop, a full twenty minutes past when he would usually be out stopping muggers and carjackers.

Peter took them an hour before he left for patrol along with his usual dose of pain meds. He decided not to up the dose on the antibiotics, mainly because he only had enough for a full two-week course for a teenage girl. The hope that he would get the full effect was there, and the fact that he felt the full force of the usual side effects emboldened it. The dizziness went away within the first hour or so, but the nausea stuck around. He discovered it was particularly bad when he did some sort of Spider-Man thing; hanging upside down, crawling on walls, flips. He only figured this out when he was making sure the new stitches in his suit wouldn’t rip in crucial moments. He found out that his sewing had really improved, and the five second run to the bathroom seems like forever.

A few more deep breaths of the chilly air did nothing to help. Standing up slowly on the ledge, he flipped the phone closed and slipped it into a hidden pocket on his hip. As long as he could avoid too many fancy acrobatics, he could also avoid blowing chunks. 

Peter tried to avoid swinging. Despite this night being a big ‘ _Screw you!_ ’ to his injuries, he still had them. Half his pair of good webshooters was still busted, leaving him with a leftie that had a tendency to jam. Instead, he opted to hop from clustered rooftop to rooftop when he could. The only way it could have gone any slower was if he crawled along every building.

Peter’s slow crawl across the city was matched by an equally slow night in crime. It was at least an hour before he came across the first sign of any trouble. Even though he changed his routes for his patrols, Peter had tried to look in on this area several times a night for a while. Only one of the streetlamps worked reliably along the entire stretch, and it didn’t seem like anyone was coming by to fix the rest anytime soon. The halted construction nearby was a popular hangout during the day and a hotspot for criminals at night. With them plus the usual residents of the rundown apartments, the dark streets were more than optimal for a mugging, or worse.

A loud shout sent him racing across the roof of the apartment building he had just landed on. He leapt across the narrow gap between it and the building next door, looking around for any sign of where to go next. When he heard another yell from a nearby street, he dashed off and perched himself on the ledge to see exactly what he was getting into.

Three men had a young girl trapped. They stood huddled together, far too close to her for comfort. At least two of them were drunk, but he’d bet money on all three. He would be able to smell the alcohol from here even if he didn’t see the bottle the one in the back was carrying. One swayed and swiped his hand at the brick wall next to him to try and find his balance. That bottle obviously wasn’t their first.

“Jonah, swig,” Said the staggering man. The man with the bottle, Jonah, passed him the bottle. He leaned against the wall and took a deep gulp.

“N’t all of it Bill!” Jonah smacked him, leading him to spill some on his shirt.

“Yeah, Bill,” said the third man. “You haven’t asked ‘f our pretty little lady wants any.” When he pulled her shirt towards Bill and Jonah, Peter could see the glint of a knife against her neck. In the same moment, she saw him on the ledge. Her eyes widened a fraction, and he moved his finger to his lips. She relaxed and looked away before they turned back to her.

He crawled over the ledge and on to the wall, down to just above eye level. With a deep breath, he jumped and landed on the ground in a crouch. Peter stood up and waved. “Hi!”

All three men turned around at the sound, and the third man lowered the knife away from the woman’s neck just enough for Peter to grab it with a web.

“What the-” He was cut off by a solid punch to the jaw which landed him on the ground. As Peter shook the impact off his knuckles, he saw the other two stumble over each other in an attempt to get away.

“Really?” He webbed their feet to the ground and watched them fall forward. “All running does is hurt you. Alright, Miss, you’re-” Peter looked around only to realize the girl was already gone. “Not here.” He sighed.

After he piled up the drunks, he webbed them together and began checking their pockets. “What are y’doing?” Asked Jonah when Peter checked both the pockets in his coat.

“Looking for your cell phone,” Peter replied.

“Y’gonna rob us?” Bill asked. “Thought you was a good guy or somethin’.”

“I’m calling the cops so you don’t turn into beer popsicles by morning.” Peter looked through each their jacket pockets. It was only after checking almost every pocket they had that he found one on Bill. After leaving an anonymous tip with the police about some freshly webbed criminals did he continue his patrol.

Things continued to pick up after that. Peter stopped several muggings, a burglary attempt, and an attempted assault that would’ve gone a whole lot differently had he not been there. When he stopped for a short rest, he checked the time left on his self-allotted deadline. A few hours before he needed to head home. There was plenty of time to swing by the construction area and make sure nothing fishy was going on tonight.

It wasn’t too far from where he was. He first started checking on the area to make sure no one was stealing the equipment. Then he went to make sure no one was getting hurt after he found out some people had begun staying there. When it got colder, and they moved on to warmer areas, the bigger issue became people doing drug deals or selling stolen goods in the middle of the night there. Peter usually wasn’t going to just stumble onto those, but he still wanted to keep an eye on the place.

Getting there was kind of a problem though. It didn’t have any of the kinds of buildings Peter had been using to get around all night even near it. It was surrounded by tall office buildings, which would require a little more swinging on his part. This wasn’t going to be a fun trip. Peter stretched out his shoulders and lightly rubbed his arm before launching himself off the side of the building. He caught himself at the last minute on a nearby billboard and flung back up, grinding his teeth together as he felt his stomach lurch.

When the area was in view, he was forced to stop on a nearby balcony. On a regular night, he’d stop close by and make his way in on the ground because there were no buildings close enough for him to swing in safely. A tall fence cut the entire massive area off from the rest of the world. No one was supposed to be in there since the construction had been halted, but teenagers, criminals, and spiders all find their ways. What made him stop tonight was all the activity he could see from here. Unmarked vans parked outside and inside the fence, people in suits walking around and setting up who knows what. Peter leaned over the side and cupped his hands around his eyes.

_Fancy schmancy. Someone has deep pockets._

Peter watched as they set up some equipment, lined it all up, then turned on… the lights.

“What kind of evil-doers turn on the lights in the middle of an evil-doing?” Peter muttered to himself.

With the lights turned on, Peter could see more detail on the vans, particularly the logo imprinted on the side. He was vaguely familiar with it, only having seen it a couple of times when similar black-suited goons snatched up villains after his fights. When he protested the first few times, he was either given a spiel about how perfectly legal it was for them to be taken into their custody. Whether that was to make him shut up and leave or an actual answer, it never sat right with him. When they refused to give him any answers, he was chased off. Whatever they were doing here, it seemed fishy.

 _Should I spy? No._ Peter thought. _Will I spy? Yes._

He made his way around to the other side of the fence in a wide arc. He stopped when he made it to the Starbucks. That was his landmark for where the hole in the fence was. Climbing up the side of the wall and turning around, Peter settled into a comfortable position before using his hands like binoculars once again and looking in the direction of the cut section of the fence. The lights the black suits had set up were still visible from this side, but it didn’t look like any of them were posted over here. It didn’t look like they were anywhere but on that side of the construction area. The hole cut into the fence on this side wasn’t widely publicized. The entrance was only big enough for two at a time. Three if you went sideways. It was also hidden behind a mass of bushes no car could get through, let alone those vans.

 _Duh_ , Peter thought. _If they're this big of an operation, they must've used the actual gates._

Peter weighed the pros and cons of heading any closer. Sure, he’d never seen these guys do anything provably illegal, or more than a little suspicious. They said they were government. Maybe they were… testing the soil. Peter snorted and shook his head at the thought. He knew better by now than to trust anyone collecting supervillains.

After another sweep of the area by sight, he dashed across the street and through the hole in seconds. He ducked behind a steel beam just in case anyone looked his way as he tried to find a place to hide near the workforce. A nearby scaffolding would suit his purpose. It wasn’t too close to the edge of the working area, but close enough to Peter to be able to pick up on anything important. If they spotted him, he’d be able to run off quickly. He scrambled to the bottom and climbed to the top as fast as he could, flipping himself over the edge. It was a flawless execution, if not for the man that was already up there.

Peter staggered backwards and caught himself on the edge of the scaffolding by his feet. Arms twirling in the air to steady himself, he barely held back a yelp at the shock of a man being at the top. The man, dressed in a dark hoodie seemed as shocked as Peter to find him there, but instead of calling out to those below, reached out a hand to pull him back up. Instead of accepting the hand offered, Peter centered himself, entered a crouch on the side of the scaffolding and walked himself upright. When he stood up, he was facing the unknown man and ready for a fight.

The man held up his hands in a calming gesture. “I’m not an enemy,” He whispered, reaching up to pull off his hood. Peter tensed, but the man continued steadily. Once the hood was off, he flashed a quick smile. “Nice to see you again, although not in the best of circumstances.”

Even in the dark and minus the costume, the full features of Captain America were undeniable, especially since Peter had seen him only a few days ago. “Cap?” He asked, a little unsure of why an American icon was here, in the middle of the night. The Captain nodded. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” He said. “You really shouldn’t be here.” He turned away from Peter and back to the workers below.

“Me? This is my turf! Those could be stolen vans, and this could be an arms deal for all I know.” Peter tried to keep his voice down despite the bubble of irritation rising in him. “Not exactly Captain America material.”

“This isn’t an arms deal.”

“Really? Then what is it?”

“It’s a government-sanctioned investigation. It has to do with those ants that attacked the other day.”

“Then I really want to know why you’re here.”

“This part of the government isn’t too into sharing information despite promises to. They have a mobile lab on this site that isn’t as secure since it isn’t connected to the rest of their servers.”

Peter narrowed his eyes. “You’re here to steal files.”

“I prefer the phrase _collect information_ ,” Cap said. “But yes. Now that you know this isn’t anything to worry about-”

“Do you want any help?” Peter blurted out before he could stop himself. The Captain looked at him curiously, and he took the momentary pause to explain. “I’m already here. I do semi-legal stuff all the time, don’t tell anyone that,” He felt a small prickle in the back of his neck and looked around. “And you should duck.”

Cap grabbed Peter’s back and shoved both of them down to a kneeling position as a flashlight hovered over their area. It stayed for a second, then moved on. When Peter tried to move, the Captain refused to let him. The light came back over the area to check for anyone who had decided to move after the first sweep. Once it was gone for good, he let go. “Sorry about that.”

Peter rubbed his arm. “S’okay.”

The Captain rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “This,” He pulled a device out of his pocket. “Needs to be within twenty feet of that mobile lab for the files to transfer. You might be more suited to it than I am.”

Peter looked at the device to the lab, then back to Cap. He gulped. “Can I ask one question?”

“You just did, but I’ll give you one more.”

Peter gave a fake laugh. “Dad jokes. Funny. Why do you want them, exactly? Am I allowed to ask that?”

“The files in that mobile lab haven’t been uploaded anywhere else yet. They’re all SHIELD has on a case they said they’d keep us in the loop on. So far they haven’t.”

“Have you tried asking?” The Captain smiled at that but didn’t answer. Peter sighed and grabbed the device from his hand. “Wait, what are you going to do while I’m sneaking over there?”

“I said one more question.” With that, the Captain launched off the side and silently landed on the sandbags located on the other side. Peter lost sight of him as he dashed into the darkness. Turning his sight back to the target van, he mapped out the best way to reach it. The mobile lab was located in the middle of the work, but there was scaffolding above it that connected to one of the half-constructed buildings. He could use the buildings to get to that, jump down, and place the device on the scaffolding instead of a direct route. Jumping to it from the overhead metal beams was the best bet. Sneaking around the edge of the area unseen and unheard would be tough, but it was doable.

Peter’s first move was to wait and see if there was a pattern to the agents who moved around the half-constructed buildings and flashed their lights through them. They would look in, up and down, and then move on, then back over them a minute later just to be sure. He would have to be careful about the second look.

He jumped up and landed a little too hard on the side of the metal beam above him. Wincing, he leaned to the right as he pulled himself up. After making sure the noise hadn’t alerted anyone, he continued to walk along the beams towards the mobile lab. Whenever he saw someone change direction or come near, he would quickly dash behind a vertical pole or concrete tower.

It was slow going, but soon he had walked, climbed, and balanced his way to the beam above the mobile lab. The only thing that stopped him from jumping down onto the scaffolding beneath him was a slight movement. A guard that he hadn’t seen from far off was on top and shifting into a more comfortable position. Peter checked the device and cursed silently. He wasn’t in range from this height, but he couldn’t exactly drop down without giving himself away.

A loud THUNK, followed by a couple more thumps and sloshes came from somewhere on the other side of the work area. Peter saw the guard’s head shoot up and he followed their gaze to see around a half dozen port-a-potties toppled over, with their once boarded up doors closed flapped open and contents spilled. The agents who were near them were doubled over, hands over faces, and Peter’s stomach rolled as the smell wafted his way, and he covered the lower half of his face with his elbow to try and block some of it out.

“Cushings!” A voice half-called, half-gagged from somewhere beneath the scaffold. “ _Get down here_.” The agent on top of the scaffold carefully climbed down with one of his arms covering his face the entire time.

Now that an opportunity presented itself, Peter jumped down and checked the device. It lit up, hopefully, a sign that it was working, and Peter kept crouched as low as he could. He flinched when the device let out a low, quick beep and all the lights turned off. He glanced over the edge of the scaffolding to make sure no one was looking in his direction before making his way back up.

The way back was easier since everyone was preoccupied both with the sludge and how the port-a-potties themselves fell, seeing as no one was stationed in that area. They were on alert for an intruder, but mostly along the ground. With his stomach still turning due to the smell and the jumps from beam to beam not helping, Peter was more worried about vomiting along the way than being seen. It was only around the time that he made it back to his original scaffolding that they began to look up, which was his cue to exit. He ran through the hole in the fence and didn’t stop until he was in the alleyway on the other side of the street. Once there, he rolled up the bottom half of his mask and gulped down several breaths of fresh air, the smell still stuck in his nose.

“Nice work.”

Peter whirled around, and his shoulders slumped in relief when he saw Cap. “Not even going to ask how you got here. Was it you knocked over the...?”

“Yeah, that was me.” Cap held out his hand for the device.

Peter tossed it over and shuffled his feet. “Well, Cap, this was fun. Totally loved it. But I should probably, like, go.” Peter began to backpedal towards the nearest wall. He felt his stomach lurch in the worst kind of way and quickly tried to remember everything he’d eaten that day, just in case it came back up. He ran to the nearest pile of trash and vomited.

“You’re sick?”

“I’m not sick.” Nearly doubled over with his hands on his knees, Peter spat to try and get the taste out of his mouth. It didn’t work.

Cap grabbed for Peter’s left in an attempt to help him stand upright, which made him jerk in an ungraceful motion. He crossed his arms and gave Peter a look to rival Gwen’s.

“Illness and injury are not the same thing,” Peter said. He smiled to try and convince the older man. It wasn’t returned.

“My offer from the other day is still open,” Steve finally said. “You look like you need it.”

“I don’t-” Peter cut himself off when loud vibrations came from his hidden pocket. He pulled out his phone, cursed quietly to himself, then shut it off before shoving it back into the pocket. The construction area wasn’t anywhere near his house. “I have to go. It’s late. Or early, or whatever. I have to be up in four hours.”

“Come tomorrow, then. If you decide to drop by, the doors are open.”

“I don’t think you-“ Peter started before realizing he didn’t have a good enough excuse not to go. Peter rolled his mask down. “Thanks.” As he crawled up the wall and jumped over the edge of the roof, Peter scrunched his face. “I just vomited in front of Captain America.” He muttered.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you done?” Peter asked after what seemed like forever.
> 
> Gwen doubled over and struggled to breathe between bursts of now silent laughter. “You, you,” She said, gasping for air and flapping her hands. “You threw up on Captain America!” She finally got out, sending her bursting into another set of giggles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New Year, new chapter!

When Peter told her about what happened, Gwen laughed so hard she snorted. At Gwen’s suggestion, the two were sitting in the area under the bleachers once again. Her laughs and giggles bounced around the concrete.

“Are you done?” Peter asked after what seemed like forever.

Gwen doubled over and struggled to breathe between bursts of now silent laughter. “You, you,” She said, gasping for air and flapping her hands. “ _You threw up on Captain America!_ ” She finally got out, sending her bursting into another set of giggles.

“I did _not!_ ” Peter hid his face behind his hand, despite there being no one else around. “Would you _quit it?_ Everything in that story you could latch onto and you pick that.”

“Alright, alright. I’m done!” She clapped her hands together, signaling that her final burst of giggles was over. It didn’t wipe the smile off her face. “What was he doing there in the middle of the night anyways?” Gwen asked, popping a chip in her mouth. She offered the bag to Peter since he’d overslept and forgotten his lunch in his morning rush.

“Collecting information. Same as me,” He said, grabbing most of them in a large handful. Gwen smacked his hand, making him drop half of them back into the bag.

“Why was Captain America spying on people?”

Peter scrunched his nose at her. “I’m not sure if it counts as spying? He just wanted files on an investigation, one that he’s a part of. He didn’t elaborate much further. We talked a little, but I had to hightail it when my alarm went off.”

“Aw, now he knows Spidey has a curfew.”

“I like to get _some_ sleep on school nights.”

“Did he hear your Captain America ringtone? Do you still use that?”

His cheeks turned slightly red. “No.” And then added, a little quieter, “I had it on vibrate, _thank God._ ”

“I totally heard that.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “He did tell me his offer to come get checked out at the Tower is still open. I had a little more time to think about it this time, and I still don’t know if I should go.”

Gwen suddenly sat up a little straighter. “Wait, what?”

“His offer to get my arm checked out… at the Tower…” Peter trailed off when he saw the anger forming on Gwen’s face.

“What the _fuck_ , Peter Parker?! _”_ Gwen screeched as she shot up, spilling the remaining chip bits all over Peter’s lap.

“Gwen! Calm down!” He hissed as he wiped them off his lap.

“ _Oh my God I am so sorry,”_ was her instant response as she snatched the bag off the ground, then “No, I’m _not_ sorry! _You_ should be sorry! You’re about to blow off a man who wants to help you. He is offering you medical treatment. For the _second time_?”

“Gwen.”

“Why wasn’t I told about the first time? Was it because I would’ve told you to go? Because you should’ve gone. Oh, God, you gave yourself stitches _you idiot_.”

“ _Gwen._ ”

“Oh, no, no, _no_ ,” She jabbed her finger towards his face with each ‘no’. “You are going. I will _drag you there_ , secret identity or not. _”_

"Will you just- _”_

 _“I will drag you there, Parker_.”

“ _Listen to me!_ ” Peter shouted. Gwen blinked, pursed her lips, and sat down with her arms crossed. “Thank you.”

Peter took a deep breath. “I didn’t go the first time because I don’t know these guys. Look at what happened last night. Sure, he was nice, but he operates in a different world, with government operations and stuff. What if they want me to take my mask off? What if it’s some weird trap. Like that’s even possible. I wouldn’t even know where to begin in trying to sneak out either.” Peter gave it a second to sink in.

“You’re paranoid.”

“I’m not paranoid,” Peter said. “It’s better and all around safer if I don’t go.”

“For who?”

“You,” Peter said. “And Aunt May and everyone I’ve ever met.”

“But not for you. You lose out.”

“I can protect myself, you guys can’t. And I can handle things on my own,” Peter protested. “I _am_ handling things.”

Gwen huffed. She had sunk in on herself during Peter’s speech, slowly crossing her arms and pulling them closer to her chest as her shoulders slumped. Peter frowned and rubbed the back of his neck.

“You’re not handling things. You’re worried about keeping your identity a secret, and I get why. You may not think I do, but I’ve seen the people you’ve fought on TV and the stuff they can do. None of it’s pretty.” Peter held back a grimace at the idea of her sitting at home worried about him. That was exactly what he wanted to avoid with hiding his identity from his family. That, and other frightening outcomes. “I don’t think you worry enough about what happens when the mask comes off. How many times have you had to give yourself stitches and pray it didn’t get infected? And how many times have you just had to wait things out?” Gripping the edge of the concrete that he was sitting on tightly, Peter deliberately refused to look at Gwen. That was all the answer she needed. “You need to go.”

“You don’t understand the point I’m trying to make here.”

“Then help me understand!”

“Those guys,” Peter waved his hand off in a random direction as if the Avengers were standing right there. “Are bad news. I can feel it. Whether they want to be or not. If I took handouts from every guy like the nice ol’ Captain who came along, I wouldn’t have made it to Junior year.”

“If you don’t start taking some handouts, you won’t live to be a Freshman in college.” She crumpled up the chip bag and tossed it in the trashcan that hadn’t been used since the game last Friday. “Make some rules for yourself.”

“Rules?” Peter repeated.

“Rules. Regulations. Requirements. Three strikes and you’re out? A list of lines not to be crossed. If they do anything you don’t like, you just leave.” He frowned, and she furrowed her brow. “Will you at least try for me, Petey?”

“Rules.” Peter sighed. “I can make rules work.”

“I can wait for you somewhere, make sure you leave by a certain time. Get some danishes or something.”

Peter laughed. “You don’t have to do that.”

“There’s no other way to make sure you go, now is there?” She reached down into her bag and pulled out a sandwich, tore it in half, then gave the bigger part to Peter.

 

 

Everything interesting seemed to happen in alleyways. The thought popped into Peter’s head as Gwen turned unexpectedly, kicked a soda can out of her way and lead him to the set of metal trash cans lined up against the back wall. When the side door to the cafe they were next to opened and a waiter came out with a trash bag thrown over his shoulder, he gave the two a questioning look. She threw him the stink eye until he hightailed it back inside.

Going along with their plan and Peter’s paranoia, Gwen had picked a cafe that she could wait at that was close enough where she could come get him if anything went incredibly wrong, but be far enough away for Peter to make sure no one followed him before he came back to meet her. He was to change in the back alley, do his business, then come back before a set time, or Gwen would be forced to check in on him. Gwen, under the impression that only a few rules were needed and much of this was overkill, went along with the intense plan if only to get Peter to go.

“Hurry up and change so I can get a danish,” Gwen turned around when Peter made a twirling motion with his finger. “They have the best apple ones here. I can save you one if you want.”

“I can’t believe you’re actually about to get a danish. I have to slam myself into the side of a glass building and then climb the rest of the way to the top, and you’re talking about danishes.” Peter stuffed his clothes into his bag and clipped on his webshooters. He eyed the cafe door and the entrance of the alley warily. In his rush to get his costume on, he pulled his mask on a sideways and had to adjust it until he could see through the lenses.

“They’re good danishes,” Gwen replied. “Got everything?”

Peter nodded and tossed his bag over to Gwen. “Hold on,” She said before reaching in and tossing him back his cell phone. "Could you maybe call me when you're done? If you can?"

“Really?”

“It’s not like you have contact names in it.” Peter shrugged and stuck it in his pocket.

"I'll try." He looked off towards the Tower. “It’s pretty tall.”

“Almost a hundred stories. That’s around 1,180 feet, or something. Taller than the Eiffel Tower for reference.” Peter stared slack-jawed at Gwen. The corners of her lips turned up slightly. “I googled it on the way here.”

Peter tossed his head back and covered his face with his hands. “I’m going to die. I won’t even make it to the top. I’ll just fall to the ground and become a little red and blue splotch for the city to clean up.”

“Don’t think about it.” Gwen gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. “Just think about the apple danish that’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

Peter shook his head as he stomped over to the brick wall and jumped, clinging fast with all four limbs. Before he began to climb, he turned his head to Gwen. “If I die, I’m coming back to haunt you.”

“Would you hurry up and go before someone comes back out?”

“Fine, _fine!_ ” He said as he clambered up the wall in a haste. “See? Going.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Just-” Looking down, all he saw was a very annoyed blonde, tapping her foot, one hand on her hip and the other pointing for him to go. “Actually going now.”

At the risk of pulling out his stitches, Peter swung through the high rises and the skyscrapers between him and the tower. Heights had never frightened Peter, not even before he had gotten his powers. He’d been at least as high as the Tower a couple of times. Probably. It was hard to guesstimate exact height when stuck upside down in the claws of the Vulture or, even worse, hanging by a thin web to his power pack. What scared him most about being up so high was the falling part. There’d been more freefalls in his career than he’d like to admit, but thankfully only a handful ended up with him meeting concrete. None of them were pleasant, but none of them were from this high either. He was more durable than everyone else, but even he couldn’t withstand a fall from a thousand feet up. With one janky webshooter and an even jankier arm, he had a knot in his stomach that grew tighter whenever he got higher.

Avengers Tower was in a wonderful location if you were looking for an unobstructed view of the city. It was massive, and no other buildings near it could really compare. The closest skyscrapers were still lacking about a third of its height, and it dwarfed all the other buildings sprinkled near its base. It mostly consisted of large window panes. Last time he smacked into one of them it was still called Stark Tower and he was less adept at his webs. The glass didn’t shatter like any other window in the city would. After he slid twenty feet down on the slick surface, finally came to his senses and stuck, then collected his bearings and made sure he hadn’t dropped anything important, Peter realized that the glass must have been reinforced. It only made sense for the billionaire to not only keep it stylish but functional (in the safe against attackers sort of way). Once it became Avengers Tower, no less was to be expected.

Peter’s webline stuck onto the last skyscraper between him and the Tower and he flew into his arc. This would normally be where he would turn, not take any chances trying to swing on the Tower.

Peter let go of his webline at the top of the arc, propelling himself towards the glassy surface of the lower levels. At the same time, his Spidey-sense began to pang loudly in his head, as if he didn’t already know this was a stupid idea. As soon as he was close enough, he shot off a webline and yanked on it. The force twisted him midair, and he hit the wall sideways. He scrambled to right himself before looking up.

He hadn’t fallen too far. The amount he still had to climb was like a small building on its own, but at least he hadn’t fallen beyond the halfway mark. He was definitely above floor sixty, maybe even seventy. Probably. There was no way to know for sure unless he looked down. There was no way he was going to look down.

Peter began the slow crawl up the wall, aiming for the large balcony-like area that extended out over the city. Aside from walking in the front door at the bottom, which he really hoped wasn’t what Cap expected him to do, that was pretty much the only way in. When moving past one floor, he saw a group of workers standing around for an end of day chat do a double take when they saw him climbing past. He scrambled past them after a weird second of lens to eye contact and picked up the pace.

Hoisting himself over the edge and onto something solid, Peter rolled onto his back and laid there for a moment. He heaved out a large breath. He peeked over the side, gulped, and scooted farther from the edge.

“Okay,” He muttered to himself, clutching his bag. “You’re already up here. Just get up and see if the door is open.” Peter hopped up and turned on his heels, only to see someone was already standing in the doorway.

Coming here today, Peter knew there was more than a chance he’d see someone other than old red, white, and blue. But no matter what, there was one person he absolutely wanted to avoid. Tony Stark, the living embodiment of the phrase ‘ _Don’t meet your heroes_ ’. In their last encounter, it had only taken about two minutes for him to go from a pedestal to a trash can in Peter’s mind. Now, Stark was standing in the doorway with an Iron Man gauntlet pointed at him. It wasn’t helping Peter’s opinion of him.

“I think you should go,” Stark said. Peter turned his head slightly to the side. Something was missing.

“Your glove isn’t on,” He said. “I mean it isn’t turned on. You’re obviously wearing it.”

“Super hearing?” Stark asked. Peter nodded. “I hate super hearing. Ruins everything.” He lowered his hand. “I was just in the middle of some rewiring. Why are you on my balcony?”

“You do call it a balcony? I was wondering about that actually, couldn’t really-” Peter stopped rambling when he saw the look on Tony’s face. “How’d you know I was here?” He asked.

“Security systems picked up something a lot bigger than a bird slam into the side of the Tower, then start climbing. Hence,” Stark finished his sentence by lifting the gauntlet.

“I wasn’t breaking in or anything, I swear.” Peter held up his hands in a mock surrender.

Tony sighed. “Just get inside. It’s freezing.”

He turned into the room behind him as Peter cautiously followed behind. He tried not to gawk as soon as he spotted how big it was. It was easily one of the largest rooms he’d ever seen, at least outside of a museum or something. The furniture looked so expensive that Peter being near it would decrease its value. He made a silent declaration not to touch anything.

Stark walked over to what looked like a kitchen counter but was several times bigger than the one in Peter’s house. He was currently standing in front of a fancy espresso machine. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing out there or not, Spider-Kid?”

“Spider-Man,” Peter muttered, mostly out of habit. “I came here to see Cap, I guess?”

“Was that a question?”

“I’m here to see Cap, I guess,” Peter repeated with slightly more conviction.

Tony had finished making two cups of espresso. Peter was ready to turn down the offer, he didn’t need to be any more wired, but was surprised when it didn’t come. Instead, Tony poured both into a larger glass and began drinking that. “This one only makes up to four ounces.” He offered as an explanation. After a long sip, he gave Peter a once-over and nodded to himself. “JARVIS, where’s Steve?”

“Mr. Rogers is in the gym, sir.” Peter jumped at the voice coming from nowhere. He looked back at Stark and pointed up at the ceiling. Either he didn’t see Peter’s reaction, or he didn’t care enough to explain where the disembodied voice came from. “Shall I request that he join you?”

Tony looked at Peter through squinted eyes. “No, we’ll go to him.”

He walked past all of the overly ornate furniture and ended up in front of a smaller set of weird looking double doors. It wasn’t until they slid open that Peter recognized it as an elevator. He stepped inside and motioned for Peter to follow. The doors closed automatically behind him.  The metal box they were now both standing in jerked slightly before it began to move.

The elevator, like the room, was bigger than any Peter had seen before. It could easily fit a small crowd comfortably. Peter kept his mouth clamped shut and stood on the opposite side of the elevator as Tony. Uncomfortable silence was a little better than extremely uncomfortable rambling. He kept shifting the position of his feet and arms, and glancing around. He was glad the mask covered his face. If Tony noticed how nervous he was, he didn’t say it.

“Trying something new with the costume?” The sudden question and subsequent confusion pulled Peter out of his head.

He struggled for a split second to find out what Stark meant before he looked down at the new ‘patches’ on his suit. Lacking the correct amount of red spandex, Peter was forced to use blue. It resulted in a weird amalgam of colors that didn’t look right at all. Still, the suit usable and he could get the right fabric later. Operating mostly at night meant that it was hard to see issues like that. It wasn’t like he planned to see anyone important before then.

“Aw, you noticed! I’m trying out a more asymmetrical look,” He said almost immediately.

“Just until I can afford some more red spandex.”

“Your suit is actually-” Tony was cut off by the elevator coming to a stop. The doors slid open only to reveal what Peter could only equate to the abandoned, mostly empty warehouses he’d been in around a million times over the past couple of years. Only this place wasn’t a warehouse and it definitely wasn’t empty.

It was massive, with bare concrete walls and a bare concrete floor. Hanging from the wall, separated into what looked like sections, was various workout equipment and, in some cases, weapons. Peter recognized an unstrung bow next to a quiver on the far corner and a few hand to hand weapons, most of which he didn’t know the names of. He noticed a few haphazardly piled mats off in another corner, along with a door labeled ‘Storage’.

_What else do they need to store?_

Steve was moving mats that were being used to cover the concrete floor back into the pile. Once he saw the two enter, he dropped what he was holding and half-jogged over. He beamed that winning smile. “Didn’t expect you to come.”

“Wasn’t going to.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“He looked in a mirror,” Tony said. “Next time you invite someone to my Tower, tell me.”

“He threatened to shoot me in the face with one of his glove things.”

Steve’s turned to Tony with a look of disapproval mixed with concern. “You what?”

“Stop whining. You knew it wasn’t working,” Tony said. “Stupid super hearing.”

“The threat,” Peter held both his hands in the air in front of him, “Still there.” He threw them both down in front of him.

“I’m sure Tony was very threatening, Spider-Man,” Steve interjected. “But we should get to what you came here for.”

_Did I just get ‘there-there’ed by Captain America?_

“Is there anyone left down in MedBay?” Steve continued.

“MedBay?” Tony side-eyed Peter. “Did you bring disease into my Tower, Rogers?”

“If I was diseased, I wouldn’t have made it to the balcony,” Peter replied.

“So your name is Rogers too?” Tony smirked. “This might get confusing.”

“My name isn’t-”

“Most personnel already left, particularly the ones I think you need. Everyone else is on-call for the weekend, medical emergencies and Avengers incidents only.” He stuck his hands in his pant pockets. “So unless bugboy here is in a state of serious medical emergency, or you secretly made him an Avenger…” Tony trailed off and shrugged.           

“What about Banner?”

“He’s not that kind of doctor.”

“Better than no kind of doctor.”

Tony shrugged again. “Ask him to meet us up there.”

 

 

The Medical Bay looked sterile. Off-white walls, white cots, and a different shade of off-white for the linoleum floor. It was like a cleaner version of every bland classroom Peter had ever been in, minus any whiteboard or desks. Cupboards and shelves lined the walls and sat filled with medical supplies that made his measly supply look like junk. Not that it wasn’t in the first place. Boxes of latex gloves, a whole drawer labeled bandages, and a tray of tools for suturing wounds that didn’t include a single old sewing needle. A few cots were lined up against one wall, each covered in one thin blanket and an equally useless looking pillow. He did a small loop around the room, both to take it all in and to calm himself before being told to sit on one.

Steve had gone to get Dr. Banner while Tony led him down here. The older man was standing in silence several feet away. Peter had taken to nervously messing with his webshooter, and eventually placed it on a tray beside him before staring at the wall. He thought he recognized the name Banner, but couldn’t remember from where. The possibility of the man currently coming down the elevator being the same man he was struggling to put a face together for was incredibly slim, but his gut was telling him otherwise. That, or he was just too freaked out since none of today’s meeting went according to the plan Peter thought up in his head at all.

When he stopped staring straight ahead and turned to look at the clock, Peter saw that Tony had grabbed onto his webshooter for further inspection.

“Would you put that down?” He asked.

Tony ignored his request. “So this is how you shoot your webs. Did you make this yourself?”

“Yes and yes, put it down before you break it,” Peter said. “If you hit the trigger wrong, it wiggles out of place and jams up. Then when I swing out of here, I splat.”

“I think I know how to look at a piece of tech without breaking it, kid.”

Peter whipped his head around when the door opened and Steve followed by a nervous-looking man in a dirty, slightly burnt up lab coat walked through. The name embroidered on the chest in cursive was _Banner_.

 “Don’t know what you’re arguing over, just put it down,” Steve said.

“You’re here, wonderful!” Tony put the webshooter back on the tray before he began walking out the door. “Tell me when he’s gone.” Steve shook his head and sat on a cot opposite of Peter.

The third man spoke up, “I’m guessing you’re Spider-Man?”

“Is it the costume? I bet it’s the costume.” Peter said. “I’m not taking off the mask.”

“If that’s the case, remember to say ‘ow’ if anything hurts,” The man replied. “Bruce Banner.” He walked past Steve and Tony towards the cot Peter was sitting on and stretched out a hand.

As Peter took his hand and gave it a firm shake, the face and name finally connected in his mind. “As in the biochemistry Bruce Banner?”

Bruce looked a little shocked to be recognized, but it faded into a small half-smile. “Among other things, yes. No offense, but I wouldn’t take you for someone who’s interested in biochemistry.”

“You don’t really strike me as someone who’s into medicine.”

“As the need arises.” Dr. Banner shrugged. “Do you mind telling me exactly what I’m here to deal with?”

“Uh, yeah. It might be better if I just show you.” He continued to slowly roll up the rest of his sleeve and pulled back the bandages. The swelling had gone down slightly since the day before, but that was probably due to him upping the dose of ibuprofen after last night’s acrobatics. It was still red, and that morning he noticed the area had started to turn an unpleasant color. As long as things weren’t oozing, he wasn’t concerned.

Banner poked and prodded gently at the wounds, trying not to cause pain but still inspect them. “I’m assuming you didn’t get these done at a hospital.”

“You would assume correctly. I did them myself,” Peter said. When there was a moment of silence, he felt the need to elaborate. “With one of those curved sewing needles and embroidery thread.” After an even longer silence, he continued, “I mean, they’re not the best I’ve ever done, but they’re hardly the worst.”

“You give yourself sutures on a regular basis?” Steve asked, concerned.

“Who else is going to do it?”

Bruce interrupted them with less awkward medical talk. “I’m going to have to undo them. It might hurt.” He slowly turned Peter’s arm to get a look at the second large cut. “You’ve pulled some stitches on this one.”

“They were fine this morning. Aside from the obvious. I probably did it swinging or when I hit the building.”

“You didn’t feel it?”

“Six Ibuprofen every four or so hours to dull the pain and stop it from swelling, last night and today I doubled that.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” After washing his hands and moving a tray of tools nearer to the cot, Bruce cut open the stitches and began cleaning the wounds. “I don’t have to tell you that this is infected. Have you taken anything besides the pain medication?”

“Leftover antibiotics I acquired from an acquaintance,” Peter said, trying to be as vague as possible. “I think they’re called… Cipro? Pretty expired, I don’t know if that matters any.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to cut it. Allergies?”

“Not to medicine.”

“Here’s what I’ll do,” Bruce started. While he talked he rearranged his supplies on the tray and kept at work, never missing a beat with his hands despite his overall shaky appearance. “Dissolving stitches, so you won’t have to come back and get them taken out or, God forbid, do it yourself. Thank your lucky stars you don’t have signs of sepsis because mask or no I wouldn’t let you out of here. I think we have something strong enough for you in the cabinet. Stop taking the Cipro and take that instead. If this goes away, don’t come back.” The half-smile returned.  “Unless you want to chat about biochemistry. But, please, call first.”

Bruce walked back over and put down the rest of what he needed on the tray, he picked up a syringe and showed it to Peter. “This is a local anesthetic.”

“How long will it take to wear off?”

“A couple hours at least,” Bruce said. Peter bit his lip. There could be anything in that syringe. It wasn’t like he didn’t trust the man, but he didn’t trust the man. “But you shouldn’t be using that arm until it starts looking better anyways.”

“I’ll pass,” He said, waving it off.

“You sure?” Bruce asked as he tapped a particularly sore spot.

“ _Jesus!_ ” Peter shouted before he composed himself. “You’re six feet of pure evil.”

“Five ten,” Bruce quietly corrected. He continued holding the needle where Peter had a clear view of it. “If this stuff was going to hurt you, do you think I’d ask before giving it to you?”

“Just do it.”

“I thought you’d say so.” After the small prick, Peter didn’t feel all that different. He’d never had to get an injection of anesthesia before, and so he didn’t know how it was supposed to feel. Bruce tapped his arm to test it after a minute or two. It didn’t hurt as much this time, but he still felt it. He then produced a small paper cup and offered it to Peter, who saw two large pills inside. “You’re not fully numb, but I’ll go ahead and start. Just count backwards from one hundred, it’ll give you something other than the pain to focus on.”

Someone else suturing, cleaning, and bandaging the wounds took far less time than Peter doing it himself. At first, it was just as painful. Peter counted, in his head, just like Bruce had told him too, and as time went on he felt it less and less. 

“Finished,” Dr. Banner said. He placed a pill bottle with instructions written on the side in Peter’s hand. “You’re all set to go.”

Peter stood up too fast in his excitement to go and nearly fell back down. He wobbled a bit, got his footing, and then grabbed his webshooter. “Thank you,” He said as he clipped it onto his wrist.

“I’ll see you out,” Steve said. They walked down the hall towards the elevator as Bruce began to clean up. Once inside, he remembered what Gwen asked him to do. He started to reach for his phone, but then remembered the voice from the ceiling from earlier.

“Are there cameras in here?” He asked.

“There are cameras in almost every room. They’re a part of JARVIS,” Steve answered. “There’s none in the bathrooms.”

“Where’s the closest one?” Peter peered out of the elevator doors. Steve pointed off to the side, his face growing more quizzical by the second. “Be right back,” Peter said as he dashed into the door Steve had pointed to.

With no time to be once again amazed by how overly large and extravagant the room was, Peter pulled out his phone and scrolled down to Gwen’s number. There was no contact name for anyone, but he knew every important number by heart. He thought about calling for a moment, then thought back to how Tony had just talked and JARVIS had answered. He wondered if that worked in here still, cameras or no. Peter sent a text instead.

_'Done. You owe me a danish.'_

Just after he hit send, a blaring alarm combined with a flashing light went off. A shocked Peter flinched and tossed his phone. He glanced around for it but quickly determined that the alarm was much more important than a burner phone and ran out the door to see what was happening.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What? I can totally help you.”
> 
> “Even if you could, there’s no way I’d let you. You’re not fit to help anyone right now. JARVIS, pull up the reports that set off the alarm.” As the doors closed, Steve repeated one more time, “Go home.”

“What is this alarm for?” Peter yelled over the constant buzzes. He slowed his run to a fast walk as soon as he exited the hallway and saw that Steve wasn’t nearly as concerned as him. That didn’t change the fact that he was still extremely worried. The older man held up three fingers, then two, and when he got down to one the alarm shut off. Neither of them smiled at the little trick, and Peter wasn’t really sure if that was his intention.

“I don’t know yet. I’m about to go find out.”

“What can I do?”

“ _You_ can go on home,” Steve said, heading towards the elevator. “Rest is best for injuries. And I doubt you usually get a lot of it.”

“What? I can totally help you.”

“Even if you could, there’s no way I’d let you. You’re not fit to help anyone right now. JARVIS, pull up the reports that set off the alarm.” As the doors closed, Steve repeated one more time, “Go home.”

Peter stood with his feet planted firmly and tried to cross his arms. It didn’t work out and they turned into a strange mess of limbs, of which he could only feel one. He let them both fall to his sides.

“ _Go home_ , he says,” Peter huffed, barely perceptible. He thought about it for a moment. He could follow them. Find out where the emergency was and help out. Unless it wasn’t in the city or anything. Then he wouldn’t be able to do anything. Even if it was in the city, he’d have to find it, and he’d already be going in injured.

“I’m going to do it, but I’m not going to do it because I think you’re right or anything,” Peter muttered under his breath as he whirled around on his heels and walked with shoulders hunched to the balcony. “I’m doing it because I’d be betraying my country or something if I didn’t. And my arm hurts and Gwen would punch me if she knew I didn’t go straight back.” _And maybe you’re a little right._

Getting back down the building was far easier than climbing up. A leap off the balcony, a webline straight onto the building next door, and off he went. Of course, he had to adjust his trajectory to make sure he didn’t put as much strain as webslinging normally would on his arms, especially since he wouldn’t feel if his newly acquired stitches were pulled right now.

When Peter reached the cafe, he perched himself on the edge of a nearby rooftop and tried to think about how he’d get Gwen’s attention. Once he texted her, she should’ve moved to the outdoor area of the cafe, but he didn’t see her. His first thought was to text her to come out, but then he remembered that his phone was somewhere in one of the bathrooms in Avengers’ Tower. It’d be dead in an hour or two, but hopefully, no one would find it. Or it broke when he dropped it. Sighing, Peter tossed his head down, determined to just wait it out when he saw something that looked suspiciously familiar tucked neatly behind the dumpster in the alleyway beneath him. He dropped down to get a closer look, and lo and behold, it was his bag.

 _I think I missed a text._ Peter glanced back out to the street where Gwen was supposed to be. A knot was beginning to form in his stomach. _She probably had to go,_ He thought, pulling his clothes out as fast as possible. _I’ll just get home and call her cell._

After straightening his jacket so that he looked less like he got dressed in the back end of an alleyway, Peter peeked around the corner into the street and walked out onto the sidewalk. His mind wandered in a million different directions as he made his way home. He wondered what emergency call the Avengers were dealing with and kicked himself for not insisting that he go along to help. Giving in so easily wasn’t something he’d normally do. At the same time, he knew that going home would probably be better in the long run. As much as he didn’t like to say it, those guys didn’t need his help. He was more than a little worried about Gwen. Despite the rational part of his mind telling him she could take care of herself, she was probably just taking dinner to her dad, he still couldn’t help it. The irrational part of his mind was running wild with all the things that he’d seen go wrong in this city. On the subway he tapped his foot nervously. Once he noticed and forced himself to stop, his fingers picked up the same pattern. He gave up and let his foot go back to tapping. Once he got home and called her, he’d be able to relax.

Upon entering his house, the first thing he noticed was the smell of cooking. His mouth watered, and he remembered the city’s best danish that he never received. He floated over on the scent to the kitchen and saw Aunt May, still in her flower print scrubs, with a yellow apron draped over her front. Like magic, the sight of his aunt let the growing knot in his stomach melt away. Peter weighed the risks and rewards of sticking around her with fresh stitches and decided that the risks were ones he was willing to take.

“Peter!” She turned around as soon as she noticed him, lifting the ladle and spilling part of the soup she was cooking. “I didn’t think you were home.”

“I just got back.” He leaned over to sniff the soup, and she smacked the back of his head with the ladle. “Ow!” He rubbed the spot she hit.

“Did that actually hurt?”

“No.” Peter went from rubbing the back of his head to the back of his neck.

“What’s the matter?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, you usually hightail it up to your room the second you walk in. You only grace me with your presence when you need food, or a note signed. Plus, you rub your neck when you’re anxious.” Peter winced and dropped his hand. “So what’s the matter?”

“Has Gwen called?”

“Wouldn’t she have called your phone if she wanted to talk to you?”

“Aunt May,” Peter whined.

“No, she hasn’t,” Aunt May said as she reached across the counter and grabbed the house phone. When Peter grabbed at the device, she pulled it back. “Do I want to know where yours went?” Her eyebrow rose in the way that never meant anything good.

“Thank you, I love you,” Peter blurted out as he snatched it and hugged her from the side. Running out of the room and up the stairs, he added, “And I’ll make sure I get my phone back!”

“Dinner’s in ten, loverboy!” She called up the stairs after him.

He kicked the door to his room open with his foot while he punched in Gwen’s cell number. Kicking off his shoes, he pressed the call button and waited. He paced the room. It rang. Then it rang. Then it rang and rang, then Gwen’s crisp, “This is Gwen.” Peter sucked in a breath to respond, but was quickly cut off by, “I’m too busy to answer right now, but I’ll be sure to call you back as soon as I can.”

He fell back into his desk chair waiting for the beep. “Gwen, it’s me. I got my stuff back. Call me once you get this. On this number. I lost my phone. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when you call me back.” He hung up and put the phone face down on his desk. For a while, he tapped his fingers against the desk, indecisive on whether it would be overkill, then picked up the phone again and dialed Gwen’s home number. It once again went to voicemail. He left a similar message, only dropping the part about grabbing his stuff in case Gwen’s dad checked the voicemail. Calling her dad would definitely be overkill if she was just delivering some food, and it would be hard to explain.

Once the call ended, he sat with his legs crisscrossed in his desk chair, staring at the phone’s blank screen. Calling Gwen did not make him feel better. He unfurled his legs and stood up, intending to pace the length of his room again while he waited for her to call back.

 _‘Calm down, Parker, you’re overreacting.’_ Peter imagined Gwen telling him. He took a deep breath. “She’s probably just busy taking dinner to her dad at the station,” He said to himself aloud. “Speaking of which…”

Peter grabbed the phone and jogged back downstairs, hoping to be able to still help with dinner. “He returns!” Peter smiled at his aunt, who appeared to be finishing up with the food. He put the phone back on the counter and began to pull dishes out of the cabinet. “Any luck?”

“Only voicemail.”

“What did you do where the house phone goes straight to voicemail?”

“I didn’t _do_ anything.” Peter indignantly handed her the first bowl, into which she poured a large helping of soup. “She’s just busy.”

“Alright, alright,” Aunt May said, handing him the first bowl back. He handed her the second and put the first one on the table. “So, what happened to your arm?”

“I don’t-”

“You don’t know what I mean, I mean your left arm is hurt, you didn’t realize it was, oh really, because you’re nursing it. Could we skip the song and dance for once and go straight to the part where you tell me how you got hurt?”

“I ran into a locker door and got a little bruised yesterday.” The lies tumbled out of his mouth too easily. “It hurts mostly when I move. It’s not a big deal.”

“Thank you,” She said, placing her bowl on the table before sitting down.

Peter watched her take a few bites of soup before he tentatively asked, “Are you not going to check it out?”

She let out a short laugh. “It’s a bruise, and you said it wasn’t a big deal. You’re eighteen, Peter. I think you’d know the difference between something you can handle on your own, and something you can’t.”

He spun his spoon around in his bowl and finally started to take a bite, then paused. “Then why’d you ask?”

“I still like to know how you got hurt. There’s a big difference between running into a door and getting slammed into one.” She stared him dead in the eye as if daring him to break on the subject. Peter quickly finished his bite and continued eating. “But you’re smart enough to handle a bruise.” She went back to her loving smile.

Aunt May switched the subject and began questioning Peter about his school life. His classes, his friendship with Gwen, which she was convinced was something more, and his classmates were all free game. He couldn’t entirely remember the last time he had this long of a normal conversation with her. She always seemed to come home when he was out fighting, and when they were here at the same time, he had to hide from her because of obvious bruises or cuts. It wasn’t her fault that they never really seemed to see each other despite living in the same house. Because of the lifestyle he lived, it just seemed to… happen.

Peter snorted into his soup to try and hide the fact that he was laughing at another of Aunt May’s terrible jokes when the phone rang. He shot up out of his seat, causing his bowl to teeter, but was still too slow for the mom-like reflexes of his aunt. She answered the phone with a falsely perky “Hello?”, then covered the mouthpiece and whispered, “Not for you.”

When the short phone call ended, Aunt May began to quickly clean up her side of the table. “What’s up?”

“A fight happened on the other side of the city. One of those kinds of fights. You know how it is these days, people who shoot lasers out of their eyes show up and fight giant lizards. People like us get caught in the middle.” Aunt May placed her bowl in the sink and grabbed her jacket off the coat rack near the door as Peter followed her out.

 _I could have done something,_ rang through Peter’s ears, but he shook it away.

“I don’t think there’s anyone who shoots lasers.”

“Then we’ll just have to wait for that one to show up. If there are aliens out there, someone has lasers,” She said. “I’ll call later.” He watched her walk out the door from the kitchen doorway, standing between his half-eaten soup and the phone face down on the counter.

The rest of Peter’s evening was split between waiting for a call that didn’t come and fixing his webshooter. A newscast played on his laptop, talking about the creatures that had terrorized the city hours ago. It got to the point where he couldn’t stand listening to what had happened, knowing he didn’t help at all when he could have. He slammed his laptop shut and gave in to sleep.

The next morning, he woke up to a very dead phone. He slunk out of bed and down the stairs in order to plug it into the dock, and barely noticed the blinking voicemail icon. Peter shook off his grogginess and pressed the button. The voice he heard was not Gwen’s, but his aunt reminding him to put up the rest of the soup, wash the dishes, and to get to bed at a reasonable hour. All except the last one was accomplished.

After last night’s news, waiting around for Gwen to call back all day wasn’t an option. Scary as it may be, he would have to go to her house. A small chill traveled down his spine at the idea of Gwen’s father opening the door instead of her, agitated at being woken up this early in the morning for nothing. Or worse, no one answering the door. Peter sped through his morning routine and out the front door, the only stopping his rush to switch out his webshooters in the bottom of his bag and scratch out a note for Aunt May in case she made it back before he did.

Even along the short walk to Gwen's, Peter heard gossip about the monster attack. A woman stood next to a newspaper kiosk and 'Tsk-Tsk'ed at either the headlines, or whatever they had for sale. Peter really could never tell. A group of younger people were showing each other videos, which Peter didn't bother to look at as he passed. He was sure to see them all in the next few days, one way or another. Two small kids listened intently to a third who _swore_ he saw a spaceship try to suck up a skyscraper, but the Avengers stopped it just in time and everyone was okay. Everyday crazy.

As he got closer to Gwen’s, he was relieved to see her father’s black two-door sitting out on the street in front of the house. Fear was instantly replaced with anxiety as he approached the edge of the driveway, and he tried to come up with an explanation for why he was coming over for a visit at- Peter glanced down at his watch- 9:32 AM on a crisp Saturday morning. He did a double take at his watch just to make sure he was reading it right, and sure enough, he’d gotten up before ten on a Saturday of his own volition. Miracles do happen under the right circumstances.

“Did a curtain just move?” Peter muttered as he began to turn around. Coming here was not a very good idea, he decided, and going home would be a much better one.

“ _Peter Parker!_ ” Gwen whisper shouted through her now open front door. “Get your butt over here!”

Peter power-walked over the short lawn and into the front door. He politely removed his slightly muddied shoes as Gwen shut the door behind them. She walked into the kitchen and motioned for him to follow. Scrambled eggs, presumably her breakfast, were sitting out on a small table next to a pink smoothie that still had a few strawberry chunks inside. An untouched to-go box sat on the counter next to her crumpled bag.

“We need to be quiet, my dad’s asleep,” Gwen croaked, pointing upstairs. Peter suddenly realized it wasn’t a purposeful whisper shout.

“What happened to your voice?” He asked.

“Last night was long and terrible. I texted you, but you lost your phone, right?”

“You got my messages?”

“No, about the time I made it to the hospital, I guessed you would’ve either answered me if you could or been there.”

“Hospital?” Peter rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, let’s start at square one. I lost my phone after I told you I was done with the Avengers. What happened after that?”

“My dad knew I was out, so he asked me to bring him dinner from someplace nearby. I left your stuff behind the dumpster and texted you where it was and why I left. Then when I was at a Thai Fusion place he likes near his station, a very large cricket hops onto the sidewalk outside.”

“A cricket? The news just said it was a monster, they didn’t say specifics.”

“Well, it was a cricket. A grasshopper. A locust, as in the plague. There was two of those, plus a fuzzy moth thing. They were all massive, totally person-sized. I only saw the one cricket. When it landed, it cracked the sidewalk beneath it. I’ll just show you the video I took from behind the counter.” Gwen walked over to her bag and rummaged through it before pulling out her phone. After checking to make sure it wasn’t dead after spending all night not charging, she pulled up the video and handed it off to Peter before sitting down and partaking in her smoothie.

At first the only clear things in the video were that Gwen was hiding behind the counter of the Thai Fusion restaurant, and the large window in the front had been shattered. Even the window could only be seen through a thin layer of dust. Once the camera focused and Gwen bravely popped her head up over the counter a little more, Peter could see that it wasn’t just the window that had shattered, but the entire outside facing wall of the store had been cracked. The dust, coming from the remains of parts of the sidewalk and the wall, as well as shattered glass, settled and the outdoor scene became clearer. Through the remains of the window, he could see part of what she had seen. Peter paused the video to get a better look at the creature. It was about the height of the average middle schooler and had what looked like sharp barbs covering its spindly limbs, which also ended in claws. He didn’t even want to know what it looked like from the front.

“Yikes,” Was all he could muster.

“Yeah, yikes. Keep playing it, there’s more.”

Peter did as he was told. The cricket, or whatever it really was, turned to the side abruptly and Gwen pulled her phone back beneath the counter in a rush to hide. A loud _THUNK!_ Played somewhere offscreen, and the kitchen’s backdoor opened from the outside. Gwen turned, showing the bottom half of a familiar purple and black uniform. When the figure shouted and waved them out the door with an arrow in his hand, the video shut off.

“Hawkeye saved you?”

“I will admit it was a little cool.”

“Didn’t you call him the lamest Avenger?”

“I said a little. He’s less lame now that he’s saved the best friend of Spider-Man.” Gwen shrugged.

“Right,” Peter muttered, looking up from the video. Gwen was oddly calm about this. _Is that because of me?_

“Plus, he totally got an assist. Arrows don’t make that sound.” Gwen shifted her position. “They basically kept those bug things busy while everyone ran. Then at some point, they sort of up and… left.”

“How can two giant crickets and a moth up and leave?”

“How can a massive stampede of giant ants up and leave?” Peter bit his lip. “Weird things happen. At least no one was hurt too badly, far as I know. Just a lot of property damage. Eggs, please.”

Peter handed her the plate of eggs with an odd look. “None of what you’ve said explains what happened to your voice.” He pointed out.

“I went to the hospital with everyone else to get checked out. Only a few scrapes, thank God. After my dad made it there and found me, we had a very loud discussion that scared a lot of nurses on whether I had to sleep there or not.” Gwen smiled. “I won.” She cut the eggs in half with a fork and offered some to Peter. His stomach rumbled in protest when he turned her down. "Suit yourself."

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“No. Stop that. You can’t be everywhere all the time, Petey, and you sure as heck can’t do it all."

"It's not like I was out saving someone else. I was at home, eating soup."

"Great! May makes amazing soup." Peter scrunched his face, still not convinced. "Look, I may not know all about the hero side of you yet, but I do know you’ll run yourself ragged if you try too hard. The focus of the video may be the weird cricket, but I think the end shows you something more important.”

“A Thai Fusion kitchen?”

“No, not a Thai Fusion kitchen, you dummy. That you can take a day to fix yourself up and the world won’t burn down.”

Peter sat in deep thought as Gwen munched on her eggs. Despite them messing his routine up, the Avengers worked on their own. More than that, they were good at what they did. He knew that Gwen wasn’t saying he wasn’t needed anymore. Spider-Man would be around as long as there was crime. But maybe he could learn to trust others to tackle the biggies if only for the week it’ll take for him to heal. Sticking to the Friendly Neighborhood he began with for a few days and actively avoiding big fights wouldn’t be so bad.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Gwen said. “I was going to leave your danish with your bag, but I thought it’d attract bugs while behind the dumpster, so I kept it.” She reached behind her and pulled the unopened to-go box onto the table. “I present to you, the World’s Best Apple Danish!”

“We’ve pumped it up to World’s Best now, huh?” Peter’s smile fell as he opened the box only to see a very smushed danish. Gwen barely held back a laugh.

“So I guess it got a little squished. It should still taste the same. I think,” She said. “Stop looking disappointed and taste it.”

“This isn’t my disappointed look,” Peter said, picking up a weirdly shaped chunk. “This is my _‘I’m about to eat a one day old danish’_ look.”

“The danish text was the first of many to go unanswered last night.”

“How many times did you text me before realizing I didn’t have my phone?”

“I sent you the video, clearly not in my right mind about what your phone is, sorry, was capable of. Then I did a little play by play of what happened to me up until I made it to the hospital, skipping a whole bunch of boring stuff.”

“What part of that is- No, nevermind, missing the point. I was in the Avengers’ Tower when their alarm went off, in the middle of texting you. It made me freak out and drop my phone, and I couldn’t find it before I left. So it’s still there, and I don’t know if it broke or not.”

Gwen opened her mouth slightly to say something, stayed like that for a solid minute processing what Peter said, then closed her mouth and leaned back in her chair. She then immediately leaned forward and ran her fingers through her hair. Finally deciding to lean back in her chair and put both her hands down on the table, she nodded and smiled weakly at him.

“Good luck with that.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Backstreets and alleyways were Peter’s thing. Normally, he would be perfectly comfortable hanging out in one. Normally, he would be hanging out in his Spidey suit, and he would be wrapping up after a fight or taking a rest during a patrol. Usually, he’d be the most confident person in any alleyway. These past few days, he was a nervous wreck, and alleys were not his thing. They were the start of terrible adventures that ended in horrible mistakes, which led to more alleys and more bad adventures. Yet, here he was, standing in a trash-filled, dumpster lined alleyway, in a situation he really didn’t want to be in. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't posted in a while! I'm graduating soon and prepping for college, which has kept me busy! I'll be getting back to more frequent updates.

“Did you just say _‘Good luck with that’_?” An unnaturally crumpled pastry sat in a to-go box of a similar state on the table in front of Peter. Gwen, who didn’t have a chance to change out of her pajamas all morning, scraped a few of the remaining egg scraps on her plate onto her fork. The attempt was in vain, for when she lifted the fork most of the scraps fell off. She pointed the fork at what used to be a delish danish.

“Are you going to eat it or what?”

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“What did you expect me to say, Peter? ‘Of course I’ll help you break into the Avengers’ Tower for a fifteen dollar phone’?” Peter looked like he wanted to argue but Gwen continued on. “Are you really going to go back in there and tell them you left something behind?” He looked away and shrugged. “I thought so.”

“But there’s stuff on it that-“ Peter began before Gwen cut him off.

“What important stuff is on there exactly? You name isn’t anywhere. Neither is your address.” She took a break for her voice, but signaled that she still had more to say. “You paid cash for it, and for the prepaid service cards. You don’t exactly store contacts on it. So no Aunt May, no me, and you don’t talk to anyone else.”

“ _Your_ number _is_ on there, because of all of those texts I haven’t gotten rid of yet. And, if they can get that video you sent to me through that phone, they’ll know your face and where you were at a very specific event yesterday. No real sleuthing required to figure out who you are..” Peter waited for the realization to sink in. Once it did, Gwen long groan and sank down in her chair.

“So that means if they wanted you…”

“Then they’d go through you.” Peter finished for her. “If it was just the phone, I wouldn’t care. But you’re involved.”

Gwen chewed on the bottom of her lip and crossed her arms. “I don’t want to do another heist.”

“When have we ever done a heist?”

“Oscorp.” Peter shuffled in his chair slightly. “I wasn’t arrested because I told them what you said to, and, more importantly, you were shot.”

“I was not _shot_ ,” Peter argued.

“Okay Mr. Technicality, you weren’t shot _exactly,_ but you had a _literal hole in your gut._ ” Gwen squeezed her eyes shut. “That you stitched up yourself, I’m now just realizing.”

“What did you think happened?”

“I just thought you went to a free clinic and they thought you were a gang member or something.”

“Really, Gwen?”

“You’re trying to lecture me?” She held up her hands. “We’re getting off track here. My point is, I don’t want to do that again.”

“The last time wasn’t anything like this,” Peter countered. “That was an actual heist-y situation. This is just go in, grab the thing that I need, and get out without being noticed or caught.”

Gwen put her head in her hands. “ _Oh my god, Peter.”_ She growled through clenched teeth. “You just described a heist.” After a few deep breaths she carried on. “How long did it take you to figure out how to get into Oscorp?”

Peter thought about it carefully for a moment before answering. “At least four months?”

“And when did you want to get the phone?”

“Preferably today?”

“ _Preferably_ , he says,” Gwen muttered under her breath. “We’re going to have to try something different. Just talk about what you remember from yesterday, see if it helps any.”

“I don’t think I should go in the same way. From the top? I heard yesterday there’s sensors all along the outside of the Tower. It’s nowhere near the security I’m used to on normal buildings. If I start climbing it, they’ll know I’m there in an instant and come to see what’s up.” Gwen waved at him to keep talking, her other hand tapping on the table to help her mind work. “There’s also an AI that runs the building, or at least I think he does.”

“An AI?” Gwen asked. “How could an AI run the building?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen anything like it, which is saying a lot. I do know he ran at least the top ten floors. He knew where everyone was, had access to cameras, and picked up audio in the rooms. There also weren’t real buttons in the elevator. You had to ask him to go from floor to floor.”

“That’s going to be a problem...” Her fingers tapped the table in at a continuous pace. Her phone buzzed with a notification. She quickly moved her other hand moved to swipe it away, but once she saw who is was from, she froze and her eyes widened. “Toss the heist plan. You just texted me.”

“ _What?”_

Rocketing her phone off the table and into his face, she moved the screen around to emphasize what was on it. “You. Just. Texted. Me.”

Peter grabbed the phone from her hand, but his hands weren’t any better at keeping it still. Gwen didn’t have a contact name for him, since his number changed so often, but he easily recognized his own number. When he opened the message, Gwen whispered, “Don’t!”

“It’s not like my phone knows when you see messages,” Peter reassured both her and himself. He stared at it for a while, trying to process the message and calm down. Finally, he slammed the phone down on the table. Gwen winced, and Peter attempted an apologetic shrug. “All it says is ‘Your friend forgot his phone, tell him to come back for it.’ Oh my god, literally anyone could have sent that. They probably all know who I am now.” Peter could feel his breath getting uneven despite his best efforts, and he held onto the table a little too hard. A slight crack began to appear under his palm.

“It’s probably not Captain America.”

“ _Gwen._ ”

“Why don’t we relax a little?” Gwen said in her calmest voice, trying to peel her friend’s hand up off the table. “We don’t know who sent it, so we don’t know who knows.” She added after a short consideration, “Or _if_ they know anything. Maybe they decided not to pry. You said yourself, my messages were still on the phone. They might not even know my name.” Peter slunk down in his chair and covered his head with his arms. “You’ve got to calm down and think clearly.”

“We could always text back?” Gwen suggested, knowing full well what the answer would be.

“ _No!_ ” Peter hissed. “This is a disaster.”

“I think I might have an idea that’ll make you feel better.”

“I can barely think, how do you have a plan?”

“It’s really more of an idea than a plan,” Gwen shot back with a less than reassuring smile. “I don’t know if you’ll like this, actually, but I think- Oh, hi Dad.”

“I was wondering how you were making all that racket, and now I know it wasn’t just you.” Whipping around in his seat, Peter saw a man who was at the same time ragged and well kept. His face, constantly frozen in a stern gaze, was worn from many years of service. Captain Stacy, a presence even in flannel pajama pants, a loose fitting shirt, and an untied robe, walked slowly and deliberately into the room, barely acknowledging Peter as he ruffled his daughter’s hair and began to make a pot of coffee.

Understandably, Peter, who was already in a nervous state, became absolutely pale with anxiety and looked to Gwen for guidance. The short, fast wave of dismissal he received was not the guidance he was looking for.

Peter wasn’t exactly scared of Gwen’s dad. In fact, Peter liked Gwen’s dad. Despite being a nervous mess every time he met Gwen’s dad, he liked to think Gwen’s dad liked him too. The real issue was that Gwen’s dad was a Police Captain, and Peter was Spider-Man. It really wasn’t that big of a problem, actually. Most officers liked Spider-Man, and despite never asking him upfront or meeting him out in the field, Peter got the impression that Captain Stacy was in his corner.

Cops and Spider-Man had a bit of a history, and not a particularly clean one. Although most of those little hiccups were behind him now, and he didn’t have any outstanding warrants, it was an instinct that police made him nervous. He didn’t stick around at scenes for them, didn’t hang around when he saw them, and he for sure didn’t go to their houses.

Except for Captain Stacy, who was also his best friend’s dad.

Once Captain Stacy had a steaming cup in his hand, he faced the two teens at the table. It had been about two minutes since he’d walked in, and neither of them dared to say a word. He took a sip. “Peter?” The teen perked up in his seat. “I would love to know why you’re in my kitchen.”

“Uh, um,” Peter stuttered. “Danish.” He said finally, pointing to the sad pastry in front of him.

“What Peter is trying to say,” Gwen gave him a very confused look as she began to cover for him. “Is that he heard about what happened to me last night and came to check up on me in person. As an added bonus, he’s collecting his danish.”

“Ah.” Captain Stacy nodded. “Thank you for your concern, but call ahead next time, so you’ll be able to come when we’re awake. And dressed.”

“Sorry,” Peter muttered.

He looked at the pastry. “You’ve gotta heat that up, son.” He said as he grabbed the to-go box and transferred… it to a plate. “For some reason, Gwen likes them cold. Crazy, right?” A ‘Hey!’ of protest came from his daughter as he put it in the microwave, and Peter caught a small smile. He relaxed a little.

“I’m heading in in about an hour.” Captain Stacy tossed over his shoulder. “You feeling okay, kid?” By the time Peter realized it the question was directed towards him, Gwen already started answering it.

“He’s just nervous. I asked him to take me to that thing I need to go to for school, but he says it’s too soon after an incident.” Peter’s eyes widened. He was used to lying to his Aunt and others, but he’d never seen Gwen lie to her father so easily.

“You really are crazy if you think I’m letting you go out after last night.”

“I’ll be fine,” Gwen said. “It’s not like I’m going alone.”

“You think that’ll make me feel better?” Realizing what he just said he turned to the boy and tried damage control. “No offense to you, Peter, you’re just not… protection material, if you get what I mean. No high schooler could be. You know what’s out there these days.”

“I understand, Captain Stacy.”

Gwen shot Peter a look to say _‘Don’t sell it too hard’_. “So am I not supposed to go out anymore because of last night?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Her father replied. The finger he ran across the rim of his coffee cup was the only sign of worry in his demeanor. “It’s just two similar incidents within a week of each other isn’t good. Maybe wait to go until stuff dies down a little.”

“If we waited until stuff died down every time someone attacked the city, no one would ever leave their houses,” Peter said as quietly as he could. It wasn’t quiet enough, because he also got a glare from Captain Stacy.

“Dad, this thing is just this weekend. If we don’t go, we won’t have another chance,” Gwen said. “We won’t go anywhere after to eat or anything. I promise.”

Captain Stacy sighed. “Both of you are smart. I know you are. Just, act like it and stay safe.”

“Is that a yes?” Gwen said hopefully.

“That’s a very reluctant yes.” The microwave went off behind him and Captain Stacy pulled out a plate that had a piping hot pastry on it. “But I suppose it’s still a yes.”

“Sweet!” Gwen whispered to herself. Then she turned to Peter and asked, “Do you need to stop by your house?”

Still not knowing exactly what the plan was, he shook his head. He had all his Spidey gear on him. “Great!” Gwen clapped her hands together. “Give me five minutes and we’ll go.”

“Now?” Captain Stacy and Peter said at the same time, one through the lip of their coffee cup and the other trying to take the first bite of their long-awaited pastry.

“Of course now,” Gwen said. “If I’m remembering my times right, it starts in two hours and that line is going to be _long._ ” She swiftly moved her dirty dishes into the sink on her way out of the kitchen, leaving her father, her friend, and the nervous atmosphere emanating off of her friend.

 

Backstreets and alleyways were Peter’s thing. Normally, he would be perfectly comfortable hanging out in one. Normally, he would be hanging out in his Spidey suit, and he would be wrapping up after a fight or taking a rest during a patrol. Usually, he’d be the most confident person in any alleyway. These past few days, he was a nervous wreck, and alleys were not his thing. They were the start of terrible adventures that ended in horrible mistakes, which led to more alleys and more bad adventures. Yet, here he was, standing in a trash-filled, dumpster lined alleyway, in a situation he really didn’t want to be in. Again.

“Gwen, I really don’t like this plan of yours,” He said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“More of an idea than a fully fledged plan, but I can get why you wouldn’t like it,” Gwen responded. She had explained her plan on the way, skipping over the unimportant parts, like where they were going. “I just thought that if we convince whoever has your phone to take it to a more neutral setting, it’d be better.”

“I understand the plan,” Peter said. “I just don’t appreciate the plan.” He took a very deep breath and let it out in one big huff. “What about somewhere near that construction site that I caught Captain America spying on?”

“Oh, that would’ve been a great idea…” Gwen pressed a finger to her lips and tilted her head in thought.

“Would’ve been?”

“I’ve been texting them the whole time we were on the subway. If they’re coming, it’ll be in like…” She checked her phone for the time. “Ten minutes. And you’re meeting up there.” She pointed to the roof of the building they were next to. “Why do you think we’re in this alley?”

“I don’t know! So I could change while you negotiated _with my input_?” Peter screeched as he began a mad shuffle to get his things out of his bag while he watched the street.

“It’s not like I picked this place at random!”

“I’m going to _strangle you_ when this is over,” Peter said, wasting precious seconds to jab his finger towards her.

“Okay, okay,” Gwen held up her hands. “Just hurry up and don’t make a commotion. This place doesn’t have a ton of people around, but there’s still people.”

“Turn around,” He said, a little quieter. As soon as she had her back turned and became the official lookout, he started to once again quickly strip behind a dumpster. _This shouldn’t become a habit,_ he thought as he pulled the top of his suit on in place of his shirt. “Where are you going during this?”

“I’ll stay within eyeshot,” Gwen reassured him. “The thrift store has a nice view of the roof since this building isn’t too tall.”

When she pointed out the familiar shop, recognition shot through Peter. “You picked _this_ place?”

“I know the area, the roofs are short, and people don’t frequent here often in the first place. I took a gamble that there’d be even less after last night and I was right. Plus it’s pretty far from where we both live and go to school, and from where I work.” Gwen heard the sound of Peter jumping around on one foot and took it as him not being completely naked, so she turned back around. “I said I didn’t pick it at random.”

“I take everything back, you’re the greatest,” Peter said, finally tugging on his second boot. He plucked his mask off the top of his bag and pulled it on. “How much time do I have?”

“Seven minutes, give or take.”

“Wonderful.” He said as switched out the cartridges in his webshooters. Then he reached down into his bag and pulled out a plastic container. The inside was filled with condensation from the hot contents. “I can eat my danish.”

“You _brought_ that?” Gwen chuckled.

“Well, I had to bring it because your dad made it too hot for me to eat quickly and you hyped it up a lot and it made me really want to try it so he felt bad and put it in a container, but that made _me_ feel bad for taking the container but I still really wanted to eat it and-” Peter paused, realizing that this was the incorrect subject to let his nervous rambling come to light on. “Yes, I brought it, and yes, I’m going up on that roof and I’m going to eat it.”

Gwen looked at him sympathetically. “That’s not really about the danish, is it?”

“No, it’s not about the dumb danish,” Peter muttered. “I’m still going to eat it though.”

Gwen smiled and awkwardly patted his shoulder before looking at her phone once again. “Only about four more minutes. I should go.” She looked to make sure no one was coming, waved a short goodbye, and walked quickly onto the sidewalk.

The one-armed climb up to the roof was easy. He’d been doing it for a while, the only difference now was he’d tucked something underneath his injured arm. The building itself was also only about three stories tall. Perching on top of the ledge and preparing to eat his now lukewarm, very deformed, and slightly moist pastry was also not a problem. He’d eaten food like that plenty of times. The waiting for someone to show up was the part that was killing him.

After a while, he saw Gwen walk back from wherever she’d gone to and into the store, clearly assured that no one had seen her walk by the area moments before. At least, no one that cared. It made Peter curious of how much time had passed. He didn’t wear a watch with his costume. It would ruin the sleekness of the spandex, plus he had a phone for that. Usually. So, he had no idea how much time was passing. What he was sure of was that way more than four minutes had passed.

 _How do I know when they're officially late?_ Peter wondered as he ate. _Or a no-show? Maybe I’ll just leave when the danish is done._ He shook his head. _That’s not a proper mark of time, idiot. And what would I do? Meeting them at Avengers’ Tower might be a trap. Or worse, an intervention._

A familiar sound broke Peter’s internal ramblings. He looked up, expecting to see a low flying plane. Nothing was within eyeshot. A _CL-CLUNK_ sound came from behind him and before he could put two and two together, his instincts kicked in and he twisted around in his seat.

“Hey, kid.”

“ _Tim-Camph?!_ ” He practically shouted through a mouthful. He hurried to place the container in a safe place before standing up and brushing himself off.

“I thought only Hawkeye called me that.” Stark lifted his faceplate to reveal a confused expression.

Peter wiped his face and pulled down the bottom part of his mask he’d rolled up. “I stole it from Hawkeye, he laughed at my pure love of cartoons. Fair trade.”

Stark shrugged.

“So, uh, what’re you doing here?” Peter asked, too afraid to come straight out and question the man.

“Kid, don’t play dumb. You’re the one who asked me to come all the way out here,” Stark said. As he did, he began to step out of his armor. Peter thought this was insane, especially for a man who had recently threatened him with a gauntlet. Unless, of course, his view had somehow been changed. The pit in Peter's stomach grew deeper. “You want to talk or not?”

“Uh, right.” Peter took a very deep breath. “You found something of mine, a phone to be exact, and I was wondering, for one, if I could have it back, and for another, if you, uh, snooped.”

“Snooped?” Stark raised an eyebrow.

“Looked into. Dug around. Uh, I can’t think of any other ways to say it, did you look me up based on information on that phone?”

“I might have found a few things.”

“Would you be so kind as- uh, as to elaborate?”

“Well, I didn’t look too deep, but judging from your friend, Spider-Kid is an incredibly accurate nickname,” Stark said. Peter felt a ringing in his ears and a numbness that stretched down to his fingers. “Her name was too easy to find. Tell Ms. Stacy to delete some of her online presence, that stuff is dangerous. I’m pretty sure yours would take a Iittle longer to find, especially considering you had a damn flip phone.”

He paused to let Peter answer, but the young hero was paralyzed. “You left your alarm on, full volume. Thing went off twice at two in the morning,then died. Spent a while trying to find a charger for it. Nice ringtone by the way. Now I know why you followed Rogers around like a puppy.” Once again, Stark left a long pause for Peter to answer. “Still nothing? Okay. Well,” He pulled a brand new smartphone out of his pocket. “ Only old people should have flip phones. I put your old ringtone on it and everything.”

“Are you trying to give me a phone?” Peter finally said after Tony’s long monologue.

“I thought that was pretty obvious.”

“I don’t want that,” Peter said. Latching on to the new phone was all he had at the moment, and by God he was going to let this man have it. “That’s got, what, a nice glass screen and a plastic, maybe a metal back? Real fancy. Fancy gets demolished in a week, tops. I carry my phone all the time. During the day, fights, and regular nightly patrols,” Peter pointed to the pocket on his hip. “Right here. I use it to call the police, ambulances, fire trucks, animal control, you name it. I also use it as a phone, to talk to people I know. I have a fifteen dollar phone because I break one every three months. I drop them while swinging, they smash in my pocket when I'm tossed into walls,” Peter saw Tony visibly wince at that but continued his small rant anyways. “Crooks kick them out of my hand and they shatter. And now, without any of that happening, I have to go buy another one anyways because you just decided to toss it.”

“Hm. I didn’t think about that.” Tony said to himself. He turned the phone around in his hands. “There’s ways that the design can be improved to make it more durable. Exchange some of the materials, for starters…”

“Excuse me?” Peter asked, now slightly confused.

“Fair trade.” Stark held up the phone and pointed to Peter’s wrists. “Phone that’ll last infinitely longer than any other one you’ve used in the past, in exchange for a look at your… what are they called again?”

“Webshooters. They shoot webs. It’s not that hard.”

“Right. Fair trade?”

Peter sighed. “Conditions first. One, I have to be there when you mess with my webshooters. They’re finicky, and if you break them, I break,” Peter said. He waited for a verbal affirmation from Stark before saying his next one. “Two, no more looking into my life. Not me, not anyone connected to me.”

“We have ourselves a fair trade.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should I be concerned?” Bruce asked. This time Tony looked up to see what he was looking at. It turned out to be the screen running the program.
> 
> “This is just a little side project,” Tony replied.
> 
> “That somehow makes it more concerning.” Bruce paused, trying to get a better look at some of the images the were flashing by.

Tony practically had to force the phone he brought into the hands of the kid. The teen only took it after thorough back and forth. First was Tony’s gentle reminder that if they were going to keep the deal, he’d need some way to contact him. After that, Spider-Kid repeated that it wasn’t going to last a week with the kind of stuff he did.

“Didn’t you just get stitches?” Tony asked, which shut him up on that front. Even after he agreed to take it, Tony had to disable the location tracker for him before he would lay a hand on it. The thought that he knew his way around the settings of a smartphone better than a teenager was more than a little weird.

Before Tony was forced to leave to make the courtesy call, he’d left JARVIS running pattern recognition with his one lead; the Stacy girl’s social media pages. Leaving the program running didn’t seem like the most ethical of decisions considering the deal he just made, but something about the kid made him too curious to stop it. Several somethings. First, it was the whole kid part. Gwen Stacy, according to her Facebook, wasn’t even eighteen yet. In the news clips and pictures that he had seen of Spider-Man, Tony had always thought the hero looked a little on the small side. On one hand, he’s got the shape of an acrobat, but if he was underage it’d explain a lot more.

The second thing that snagged his attention was the shooters the kid used on his wrists. They were good for what they did, but not the greatest they could be. Strike that, the one he got a short look at felt like it could be ripped apart in a real fight. In all honesty, they seemed like they were pieced together with spare parts. Looking at his costume, that’s probably what the kid did.

All of that curiosity led Tony here, sitting at his desk, having JARVIS continue to pick through some random highschool girl’s social media pages for who showed up the most on one screen, while he did his own research into the webslinger on another. He took a long swig from his third cup of coffee that morning.

“Coffee is not a replacement for sleep,” Bruce said in lieu of a greeting as he walked by Tony’s workstation. Tony barely glanced up.

When Bruce moved into the Tower, they worked in separate labs on the same floor, with a solid wall separating them. Eventually, the mass of comings and goings between the two spaces to share their findings with each other became too much, and Tony had the two labs turned into one massive lab, with a rollout wall that could separate the two in case of a more explosive experiment. A vault door and metal walls connected with bolts, only perforated by blasting glass sealed off an area for the most dangerous experiments.

“Should I be concerned?” Bruce asked. This time Tony looked up to see what he was looking at. It turned out to be the screen running the program.

“This is just a little side project,” Tony replied.

“That somehow makes it more concerning.” Bruce paused, trying to get a better look at some of the images the were flashing by. “Those look like teenagers, Tony. What are you doing with all these pictures?”

“Let me propose to you a hypothetical situation,” Tony replied, completely ignoring the question. Bruce sighed. “So, hypothetically speaking, if there was a vigilante type who had a big secret identity thing, and you had some way of finding out who they were, would you?”

“Speaking hypothetically?” Bruce raised an eyebrow. “No. Whoever it is, they probably have a reason for hiding their identity.”

“I thought you were going to say something different. Something that would validate me,” Tony said. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“Drop the hypotheticals. It’s pretty obvious who you’re talking about.” Bruce asked. “Why do you want to find out who he is? The guy’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t want people to know, with the staying behind a mask.”

“I may or may not have found out something that could lead to a name and a face.”

“I asked why.” At Tony’s confused look, Bruce expanded the question. “You’ve only met him once. Why expose him over a short-term interest?”

”I’m not planning on exposing him, as you so kindly put it. I’m just curious,” Tony said, leaning back in his chair. “And I’ve met him more than once. Saw him today, actually.”

Bruce was thrown. “You- What? This is weird, even for you.”

“Oh, Steve gets all buddy-buddy with the local vigilante and no one bats an eyelash, but I do it and suddenly it’s weird.”

“Steve is… Steve.” Bruce bit back the rest of the response that would only get him more involved than he wanted to be. “Just listen to me for once and leave this one alone,” He said, walking over to his own desk on the opposite side of the large, open room.

Tony grumbled to himself and tapped his fingers on his desk.

“Sir, the pattern analysis is complete. Would you like to view the results?” JARVIS said.

Tony chewed on his lower lip as he tap-tap-tapped on his desk, thinking over whether he should go further down this road. On one hand, he didn’t start working on the designs for the improved phone, which means the deal hadn’t yet started. As long as he finished this up before working on that, and never told the kid about this, he’d be good. On the other hand, that was the most underhanded move in the world.

“I hate it when he’s right,” Tony mumbled.

“Would you like me to delete the results, sir?”

“Let’s not go that far. Create a folder called ‘Cap’s Puppy’ and put them in there.” Tony finally answered. “Make sure it has some extra encryptions.” His second screen was freed up, and Tony moved some of his research into the webslinger’s past exploits onto it. He might as well use it to get a baseline of what the kid faces on a regular basis.

“Speaking of Rogers,” Tony asked openly to the room. ”Is he back from that thing yet?”

“Oh, you’re talking to me again,” Bruce said after a moment, now registering that his friend was once again speaking to him only after the AI hadn’t automatically answered. “The ‘thing’ he went to was a meeting with the SHIELD operative in charge of these past few incidents with these insects. Three attacks are making them consider things a little differently.”

“Three?” Tony asked.

“This is what happens when you skip every meeting, Tony,” Bruce said. “The facility where the original insects, the ants, escaped while you guys were fighting the other ones.”

“That attack only lasted just over twenty minutes. Those ants were pretty tough in a swarm,” Tony said, remembering the long scratches that he had to buff out of his armor. Only a few lucky insects got close enough to do even that. “Still, just the five of them we captured wouldn’t have been able to escape from a SHIELD lab in that amount of time.”

“Six,” Bruce corrected. “They took the dead one too.” Tony furrowed his brow. It didn’t make a lick of sense for them to go out of their way to bring along a dead ant. Then again, none of what these creatures have done since showing up the first time have made any sense. “Steve should be back soon, though. Hopefully, we’ll know more then.” Bruce rotated his chair away from Tony and began his work again.

“Hopefully.” Mind not entirely off the matter, Tony moved on towards holding up his end of the deal with Spider-Man, sealing the fact that he’d probably never open the now folder sitting amongst the rest of his personal files.

 

Steve Rogers had been up since just before dawn. It wasn’t very odd for him to wake up so early, but today he did so with purpose. He had a meeting to attend, and, by God, this meeting was going to get him some answers. When he left the Tower, Tony was already tinkering with something in his lab, but that also wasn’t very odd for the man. Usually, he’d have the time to go in and ask what it was, but that would make him late. It wouldn’t be too hard to remember to ask about it once he got back. He estimated that this wouldn’t take too long.

Oh, boy, was he wrong.

Despite a written briefing ahead of time which included instructions on how to find the site in question, the sun was up long before Steve came along the right track of dirt road outside the city. If there hadn’t been a large presence of agents, he wouldn’t have even known the facility was there. That was the point of a secret facility, after all.

Once Steve was on the premises, he was collected by agents and escorted inside the barn to more agents, who kept watch on him while he waited for the agent he came to meet. On the outside, it looked like an old, abandoned barn, with the crumbling remnants of a matching farmhouse barely standing not too far off. The barn was in surprisingly good shape, except for the gaping hole ripped through the wood that had just begin to rot. This was where several agents decked out in riot gear focused most of their energy, protecting a literal hole in their defenses. The entrance to the barn remained tightly closed but was still guarded.

He was immediately led down a hidden tunnel, then the agents he was following abruptly turned and directed him into a small room. This was where Steve was left, inside a room that could only vaguely be described as a conference room. There were a few chairs and a table placed in a haphazard arrangement, clearly set up in a haste. The room also contained various boxes, mostly empty or crushed, and a shelving unit with assorted crates in the corner. All clues pointed towards the room being a recently repurposed storage closet. It was an odd thing to do, especially in a place that definitely had designated meeting rooms.

Steve waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, the thought crossed his mind that they had forgotten about him. It was cleared away when the door opened and a woman in a black pantsuit walked in, holding a thick stack of manila folders stuffed to the brim. As she walked in, her face was the epitome of emotionless. Her eyes were cold and her face was colder. Then, she turned to the Captain and adopted a small smile, her eyes softening. Steve relaxed a tad.

“No Stars and Stripes today, Captain?” She asked in a slightly joking manner, obviously trying to break some of the tension.

“Not today, ma’am,” Steve said. “Draws too much attention.”

“Too bad. I know about a handful of men who were looking forward to it.” Despite the sincerity in her voice, the large smile she gave seemed a little forced. Uncomfortable. “You can call me Agent Johnson. I’m in charge of the bugs, at least for now. Sorry for the long wait,” She said as she sat down across from him.

“I’m sure you’ve been briefed on the basics of the situation?” The Captain nodded, and Agent Johnson continued. “Then let’s get into specifics. They chewed through our on-site mainframe before exiting. Little did they know we keep paper copies of everything.” She laid her files on the table. “I believe you already have some of these in your possession.”

“What are you-“

“I’m not here to judge, Captain. Just talk.” She paused. “Between us,” Johnson looked him directly in the eye and, for a moment, her stare was earnest, “I never thought things would go this far before we pulled you into the loop.” She slid her stack of files over to Steve.

What he was handed was pages and pages of reports that it would take hours even begin to delve into, let alone begin to comprehend the meaning of it all. One folder was entirely filled with transcripts of the eyewitness accounts. Another held the results from the dozens of tests run at the construction site and what appeared to be a second location SHIELD had found inside the city they believed they could connect to the insects. A third was an incredibly thorough autopsy report of the dead ant, as well as day to day observations of the behaviors of the other living ants. Too often, a page would contain solid black bars marking out pertinent information.

“That’s what we have so far, with certain redactions,” Johnson said as Steve turned page after page. “I was authorized to release those files to your team. Now, about what isn’t in there.”

“Does it have anything to do with why we’re in a storage closet?”

“I was wondering if you were going to bring that up. Unfortunately for us, the conference room where we would usually hold a meeting such as this was located one floor below the containment unit of the creatures was at the time of the escape. Someone, or something, attacked up top while several ants tunneled from below and orchestrated the escape. We later found out that this happened while another attack was orchestrated in the city to, seemingly to distract your team. When they took out the mainframe, we lost our ability to view security footage. I’ve been relying on eyewitness testimony to figure out what attacked the front of the complex.”

“And?”

“A humanoid in partial armor, riding a beetle.” Johnson looked slightly exasperated. “I don’t know if this gives credence to the hyper-intelligence theory, the hive mind theory, or the mind control theory. Whatever it is, it’s a problem.”

Steve processed the information for a moment. “I’m meant to believe these two incidents, here and the second incident in the city, were, together, planned rescue mission, by and for insects?”

“That’s how we’re currently viewing the situation, yes.”

This wasn’t the first time Steve wanted to laugh during one of these meetings. Nothing was all that funny. People were hurt. The situation was serious. It was just… When had the world gotten so _ridiculous?_

“Are we finished?” He asked, standing up at the same time as her. “I’ll have to share all this information with my own team.”

“Just one more thing, Captain.” The smile Johnson had kept up throughout the meeting disappeared, and in its place, the cold, hard expression returned. “Stay away from strays. You never know how willing they are to bite a friendly hand until it’s too late.” She walked by him on her way to the door.

“Is that an order?” Captain raised an eyebrow.

“Friendly advice,” She replied. “For now.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you done?” Tony asked.
> 
> “My quips have no set time nor place, but feel free.” Peter waved his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long, but I'm back!

It had been more than two weeks since the meeting on the roof, and Peter had spent every moment in between both cursing his carelessness and stupidity, and stressing over what he would do about the situation he’d gotten himself into. Someone else held all the cards, and they for sure had the means to find out his secret identity. The only thing keeping Stark from digging further and finding his name and face, if he hadn’t already, was a verbal agreement not to. In Peter’s eyes, he was royally screwed.

On top of all of this, Peter was also trying to investigate the giant bugs that had attacked the city. One attack is an oddity, and although it’s shady, he was willing to let the Big Government guys handle the investigation part while he dealt with his arm. But two giant bug attacks within a week? That couldn’t be just a coincidence. With proper medical care- _Thank you, Not-That-Kind-Of-Dr.-Banner_ , Peter was able to add on the sites of the attacks into his regular patrols. Although there was probably nothing left but wreckage at this point, he had to have somewhere to start. He spent his free time piecing together information from news reports and his own memory of the first attack in order to create a CSI like pin board in his room, but much less cool. So far he'd gotten nowhere, slow. 

Then there was the matter of Gwen. Despite her pestering, Peter hadn’t told Gwen the details about the conversation he’d had with Stark on the rooftop. As far as she knew, he’d gotten his old phone back, and the matter ended there. He held back the part about the older man knowing her name, and that she had a solid connection to him. Still, she could see that something was bothering him and guessed that there was something else he hadn’t told her. After finally snapping at her due to the combination of stress and her constant questioning, she stopped talking to him. The silent treatment had been going on for the past three days, and he knew it wouldn’t end until he got the chance to apologize.

But instead of doing that, or a million other things he should be doing, Peter was here, Avengers’ Tower, on a Wednesday at approximately four in the afternoon, carrying out his end of a deal he was fifty percent sure had already been broken by the other party.

“You realize we have a door.” Stark said as Peter once again walked through the balcony door after climbing up the side of Avengers’ Tower.

“It’s kind of a habit for me to use the back entrance.” He said. “Despite being the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, I’m not exactly the favorite of everyone in the city.”

“We have an _actual_ back entrance you could use.”

“But then I wouldn’t be able to freak out the guys and gals in lab coats on the way up.”

Tony shook his head as he led Peter onto the elevator. “JARVIS, take us to the lab.”

“ _Right away, sir._ ”

Uncomfortable silence enveloped the two as soon as they stepped into the elevator. Peter hopped from one foot to the other, fulfilling an unconscious need to never stop moving. Tony leaned slightly against the wall of the elevator. There was no emotion on his face, but even he couldn't help but tap his fingers against his upper arm in a slightly nervous manner.

“How long have you been at this?” 

Tony's question came out of nowhere and easily broke the silence. “What?” 

“I looked into news articles and the like to get a look at what an ‘average week’, how you so eloquently put it, would be,” Tony said. 

“Isn’t that exactly what you weren’t supposed to do?” Peter asked. It was times like these he wished his lenses were more than just a blank white stare.

“I didn’t look into _you_ , you. Just bug-boy you,” Tony clarified. “So how long have you been at this vigilante thing?”

“I prefer the word hero. Paints a better light,” Peter said. “And you shouldn’t you already have the answer to that if you’ve been reading all about me? Kind of creepy, by the way.”

Tony ignored the last comment and instead answered his rhetorical question. “Major news articles with pertinent details only go back about a year. Blog posts and short videos go almost a year further than that, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask for accuracy’s sake.” Tony shrugged.

“Just add a few more months, and you’ve got your answer,” Peter said, intending to end the conversation.

“About two years and some change,” Tony pretended to contemplate this. “That means you started when you were fifteen or so?” He asked, earnestly.

“Sixteen.” Peter corrected, now slightly irritated that this conversation had gone on so long and turned to the sore subject of his age.

Tony nodded. “Eighteen, then.” The elevator stopped and he was the first to step off, leaving Peter only a moment to grasp what had just happened. If this was how Tony Stark acted all the time, he might not make it through this for a different reason than he originally thought.

As he entered the large, slightly cluttered space, he walk-hopped on both feet as he turned around to get a complete view. There were two desks with slightly different organizational styles, meaning that one was completely cluttered and the other had almost nothing on it. Tony leaned against the more messy one, which Peter took to mean that it was his. On both was a mass of screens, and also open on both was a map. Peter caught only a glance of the map before it was taken off both screens. He furrowed his brow, thinking that it looked familiar, but he wasn’t in a position to ask to bring it back up. At the push of a button, Stark instead opened a mass of Spider-Man articles and videos. Peter frowned.

“I am obligated to inform you that this has gone from kind of creepy to really creepy in an amount of time that I am not, nor no one would be, comfortable with.”

“Are you done?” Tony asked.

“My quips have no set time nor place, but feel free.” Peter waved his hand.

“For the record, I do think you’re insane,” Tony said. “No kid in their right mind would go up against any of those guys-” He shoved his thumb back over his shoulder. “WIth the gear you currently use. A spandex suit, really?”

“I need to be flexible.”

“You’re wearing a sweater in half of these videos.”

“Well, yeah, it gets chilly,” Peter said. “D’you expect me _not_ to put on layers when it snows?”

Tony sighed. “Let me see the webshooter.”

Peter rolled up his sleeve, revealing two webshooters on one forearm. One was forcibly attached farther up his wrist, with a rubber band helping to keep it in place. This device looked much more beat up than the one actually attached to his wrist properly, and was of a slightly different design. He removed it and handed the device over to Tony.

Seeing the slight confusion on Tony’s face, Peter explained. “It’s a slightly older version. There’s only a few changes between that one and the one I have now. I use that one when one of the new ones needs to be repaired.”

“This looks like it’s made for the left hand,” Tony commented.

“The other half of the pair was destroyed. Hence the changes."

“What kind of changes?”

“Changed the thickness of the casing so it wouldn’t break as easily when near explosives. I had to move some of the inner parts around to make it happen.” Peter was relieved when Tony didn’t press him for more information.

“I take it you only have these three,” Tony said.

“They’re not exactly the easiest in the world to make. Keeping these three in working order is hard enough on its own.”

“If you wanted to help with explosives, just making the casing thicker wasn't the way to go. You'll want a harder material, possibly something more shock resistant,” Tony said. "You could probably work on streamlining the overall design, too."

“I’ll get right on that when I have a few weeks to myself and a mechanical engineering lab. Like I said before, I make do with what I have,” Peter said.

"Yeah, if only you possibly had access to a mechanical engineering lab." Tony stared at him with one raised eyebrow.

After a beat or two, it dawned on Peter. “Oh,” He said, then louder, looking around the lab, " _Oh._ "

“Thinking is a lot easier if you stop talking for more than a few seconds at a time. More oxygen to the brain that way.”

"Why would you let me work on it here?"

"Nu-uh," Tony said. " _W_ _e_ would work on it here. As smart as you are to have made these, I don't want you starting a fire in here because I gave you free rein." Stark turned around and grabbed something off of his desk and handed it to Peter. “According to our original deal, I believe this is yours.”

It was two devices. One of them looked like an average phone, although it wasn’t a flip phone like he was used to. It was a step up, a model where the keyboard slides out so you could type a message. It looked normal enough, but the shine on the material around the screen was an odd color. The next device was a small, circular device. Peter felt like he had seen one of them before, but he just couldn’t place it. It was until Tony had begun explaining what it was that he could.

“That one is an in-ear communicator. I’ve modified it so it works like your phone would when out on patrol. When it's in your ear you press down on this button here,” Tony showed him the button on the outside of the comm, “And say out loud who it is you want to call. Your number should appear. The other isn’t as cheap as a flip phone, but its an upgrade.”

“Why are you going through all this trouble?”

“Kid, not even Cap has a flip phone,” He answered. “But I understand that’s not what you meant. Originally it was general curiosity.” He looked over his shoulder at the articles once again. “Now, I’d toss in a small amount of concern for your well-being.”

Peter understood this line of thinking. It was the same one he tried to avoid often. One day, he was going to come across a villain that he wasn’t prepared for. One that could rip him apart, and there would be nothing he could do about it. Maybe he already had, and he just got lucky enough to scrape by. He sure had enough bruises, cuts and fractured bones to last him a lifetime by now. Sure, in his homemade hero way, he could keep dumpster diving and buying thrift store electronics to try and make his gear better and better, but how could that possibly compare to anything that this lab could cook up?

Working in the lab here would also help him in other ways. Although on the surface, it didn’t look like Stark cared much about his true identity anymore, Peter wasn’t ready to completely let him off the hook. Along with it, he was sure the Avengers had much more information on the giant insects. And if they didn’t have more information than him, they probably had better ways to get it.

As Gwen would say, he was a moron if he turned this down.

“What do you want me to do, exactly?” Peter asked, already half regretting the fact that he was accepting this.

 

“So you don’t find it even a little odd that you got all of the powers of a spider, except for the webbing part?” Tony asked. Peter didn’t know how much time had passed since he agreed to take Tony’s help with his gear and costume, but this question had been asked at least four times, in four different ways.  

Just like every other time, Peter brushed it off with a redirect. He’d gotten more comfortable with the older man, and even to the point where he stopped pacing around the lab in his Never-Stop-Moving sort of way, but he didn’t feel comfortable talking about _that._ Not with anyone.  “Seems kinda gross, though, doesn’t it?”

Peter had drawn a rough schematic of his webshooter for the two of them to pour over. That was the part that took the longest so far. He wasn’t the one who actually needed it. He knew those things inside and out. Tony, on the other hand, wanted to dismantle them in order to look individually at the components Peter had used to make them. Peter really preferred he knew exactly how to put it back together. He currently sat in a wheelie chair next to the older man’s desk, twirling back and forth, waiting for the man to finish. Every time Tony had a question about what a part did, or why it was necessary, Peter chimed in to explain what it was for, explaining as thoroughly as he could. Currently, he was inspecting on of Peter’s empty web cartridges.

“Why are there two compartments within each cartridge?” Tony asked.

“The formula isn’t mixed yet. If it was, it wouldn’t fit into the cartridge or come out of it. The webshooter both mixes it and weaves it into a rope. I have different formulas for different situations.”

“Hm,” Was all that came from Tony as he continued to look over the different parts of the webshooter. Peter walked over and winced as he saw it in pieces.

When the door to the lab opened, Peter turned his head, but Tony didn’t look up. Bruce casually walked in and sat down at his desk. He began shuffling the papers neatly stacked on his desk to one side or the other so that he’d have space to work in the middle, all the while not noticing Peter staring directly at him, a big red and blue beacon in the middle of the white room. The scientist didn’t notice him until he looked up to talk to Tony.

“Tony, you skipped another meeting and Steve is-” He stopped mid-sentence when he saw Spider-Man standing next to Tony’s desk. Peter waved, and Bruce raised his hand in an awkward, half-wave motion. “Uh, hello. Tony, why is he here?”

“Is that any way to treat a guest?”

The suspicion grew on Bruce’s face. “Is this going to be your latest excuse for missing a meeting?”

“Blame Steve. I’ve picked up his generous nature,” Tony said. Bruce rolled his eyes. “Heaven knows this kid needs my help more than you guys.”

“I’m right here,” Peter said.

“At least I’ll have something to tell Steve when he asks what you’re so busy doing.” To Peter, thought of someone ditching Captain America to help him was pretty laughable, but being an excuse to get out of work seemed a lot more plausible than Stark just helping out of the kindness of his heart. “Just don’t ask me to fill you in every time.”

“It’s not like anything new has happened in the past two weeks.”

At this, Peter perked up slightly. But, he also had a lot of practice pretending that he wasn’t paying attention, and hoped continued to act like he was waiting for Tony’s next question to show up or for the man to be finished inspecting his dismantled device. If the two were talking about what he thought, anything they said could be the break he needed to continue his investigation. Or, it could be something entirely different. They weren’t exactly New York bound heroes like him.

“That we know of,” Bruce said, side-eyeing their guest. He looked like he wanted to add more to his argument, but didn’t know what he could say on the subject.

“It’s not exactly like those insects move in complete secrecy,” Tony continued, unabated now that the subject had been breached. “SHIELD determined that the entry point from the original incident was both created and used within hours. We can’t go that route because it was caved in, same with the others. But, they’re massive, and very much alive. If they show up above ground again, I can find them. Otherwise I can’t do anything.”

“Three?” Peter said aloud. Tony turned to him, partially having forgotten that he was there.

“Forgot you’re not exactly in the same loop as us, kid,” He said. “Got any insight from the ground level?”

“Well…” Peter felt a small amount of confidence surging within himself. “D’you have a map of the incidents?”

“Tony-” Bruce objected.

“C’mon, Bruce, it can’t hurt,” Tony said as he brought up the map. “Public incidents only, for Bruce’s sake.”

Peter nodded. This map was similar to the one he made at home, except it was better in pretty much every way. It had full routes, marked in separate colors, time stamped, with entrance  points clearly labelled. With access to this much information on a regular basis, Peter’s life could be made a whole lot easier.

He shook that thought away and turned his full attention back to the matter at hand. The map, which he’d gotten just a glance at earlier, was incredibly familiar. Not in the way that a regular map of the city was familiar to him. He usually stared at them for hours when making patrol routes, marking which rooftops he’d stop at so he would have a good view of his surroundings, and which places were likely to give free food late at night (or early in the morning, however you wanted to swing it). Eventually he had more than a good dozen or so to rotate between every few weeks. Usually he added on areas as the need arose, and he didn’t pull out maps as much anymore. Looking at this map now now, the way the lines turned down specific alleys and certain streets, it reminded him of something he would draw out after careful planning.

That thought made his stomach lurch.

He leaned in closer to get a better look at the streets themselves. Obviously, one of the routes was much shorter than the others, seeing as he and the Avengers had cut it off, but now that he looked at it through a new lense he knew it all too well. He even felt like he could predict where they would go next.

Tony, who frankly hadn’t been expecting anything to come from Spider-Man looking at the map, had already gone back to working with his webshooter. Bruce wasn’t paying any particular attention past a few glances at the beginning. Peter assumed he learned to accept Tony’s shenanigans by now. If he wanted to tell them his suspicions, this was the time.

Peter took one last, long look, then pressed the same button he’d seen Tony press to bring it up, and suddenly the map was gone.

“Anything?” Tony asked.

“Nope,” Peter answered.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Safely on a rooftop, with Avengers’ Tower now a part of the distant skyline, Peter finished tapping out a text message into his new phone. He was still deciding whether using it for what he was currently doing was a good idea, but it wasn’t like he had another one lying around right now. His best hope was that Gwen remembered the coded speech they used months ago actually meant and picked up on what he was trying to say. By the time he hit send, it read something like this:
> 
> Think I missed a call from Mr. O. Need you to pick up some papers from work while I make a house call.

Peter had trouble focusing on anything the two others in the room said after he saw the map. From what he did catch, it was Dr. Banner further chastising Tony Stark over showing the map to him in the first place before the two of them returned to their individual work. Peter didn’t particularly care what they were doing at the moment. The suspicions that began to float around in his head after seeing the map, even for a split moment, were growing into wild theories. The paranoia that had kept Peter alive this long doing what he did, and that Gwen hated so much was taking root, and it was already increasing his anxiety with every passing moment. He couldn’t exactly confirm or deny his suspicions while he was still in the presence of the Avengers. At least not without telling them about _that_ incident. Gwen didn’t even know about the whole thing, and she was involved in it.

Stark was taking way too long with his webshooter. Sure, the device Peter handed him was a mess of a machine, with so many systems that he’d already streamlined himself. And, yeah, it performed a one-of-a-kind function that his life kind of depended on, but the man was supposed to be a _genius_ and Peter wanted to leave. It wasn’t like he was just dismantling the thing, he was making and updating schematics as he went, making notes.

“This would go much faster if you would stop shaking the desk with your fidgeting,” Stark told Peter pointedly.

Peter blinked hard under his mask. He hadn’t noticed that he’d started to fidget, but immediately stopped when it was pointed out. He also hadn’t noticed how anxious he’d been getting. Taking a deep breath, he tried his best to calm down. “Sorry,” He muttered, then leaned in slightly once more to look at the notes the older man was writing. Helping Stark was the best way to steady himself. They _were_ still sitting here with Peter’s dismantled webshooter in order to improve it, and here Peter was, just watching the man work.

“You can’t make the capsule smaller,” Peter said, glad to hear that the feeling in his stomach didn’t reach his voice. When Stark seemed slightly surprised that the teen had read his notes and looked up with the intention to speak. “Trust me, I’ve tried. My other formulas won’t work with smaller capsules and it needs to be a one size fits all sort of thing.”

“Other formulas? So, your webbing is inorganic?”

The question came from the other side of the room, and Peter was reminded that Dr. Banner wasn’t there for that part of the conversation. “Yeah,” He responded. “The one I use most of the time is an improved version of the original formula. On guys like the Rhino, I need something stronger. I don’t have anything fireproof yet.” Peter threw a pointed look at Stark, but it was lost between the fact that the man was turned away and the mask covering it up. “Anyway, the capsule is the smallest it can get.”

“The smallest it can get so far,” Stark corrected.

“I’m assuming the inability to reduce the size of the capsule directly correlates to the composition of the formula,” Dr. Banner said. Peter nodded. “Even if Spider-Man brings in samples of them, I don’t think you’d be able to fix that issue.”

He directed his next statement back towards Peter. “I have no idea how Tony got you to agree to all this, but if you need help, I’ll be around.”

“Thanks for the offer,” Peter said. “But I’d rather do it myself, actually. You have everything I’d need to do it in here, give or take a couple of compounds I can bring myself.”

Tony looked over the dismantled prototype in front of him, then at the clock. Peter hadn’t been keeping track of the time, and there weren’t any real windows that could tell him the time of day. “I should be finished with these notes in a couple of minutes.”

Standing up, Peter slung his bag over his shoulder. The thought of leaving any of his gear here without his supervision for any period of time went against every one of his survival instincts, but he the thought of sitting here and doing nothing about his current predicament grated on him even worse. Tony Stark, despite whatever he said, needed more than a few more minutes with the device he’d handed to him, and Peter would need a while longer to put the thing back together in a working order.

“I’ll have to come back for it later,” Peter said. “Places to go, webs to weave.” His intention was to either confirm or deny his suspicions and then return later in the night to get it. The time didn’t matter at this point, because Stark looked at least as sleep deprived and coffee-fueled as he did, and Peter was sure that he’d be awake whatever time he showed up.

“Then at least give me a second so I can walk you out.” Before Peter could even begin to his protest that he did not need to be led to an elevator that went straight up and opened directly facing the door that would be his exit, Stark added, “This is still a high-security facility, kid.”

Peter bit the inside of his cheek. That irritated him. Although he had done some things, things like breaking and entering, that weren’t completely legal in the pursuit of justice, he was pretty sure he could be trusted to leave on his own. Still, he waited for the older man to wrap up. The only outward sign of his impatience was the constant tapping of his foot. Once Tony was finally finished, Peter walked several feet ahead of him to reach the elevator, which didn’t show any signs of life until his companion arrived.

“Got a curfew or something?” Tony joked as the doors closed. Peter rolled his eyes in response, not thinking that the other man couldn’t see the gesture. “Anyway, you might notice a contact you don’t recognize in the phone I gave you. That’d be me.”

“What?”

"I assumed I’d be able to convince you, went ahead and put it in there. Call ahead _before_ you try to climb the side of the building,” Tony said. “And, please, feel free to interrupt during Cap’s briefings.”

“Will do,” Peter responded curtly. Tony narrowed his eyes. Just as he opened his mouth to say something about the lack of usual chatter from the bug, the elevator doors opened at the top floor and Peter quickly hurried out, turning quickly once to give a short wave. “ _Thanks for everything, I’ll be back later tonight to grab my stuff, really gotta get going!”_

           

 

Safely on a rooftop, with Avengers’ Tower now a part of the distant skyline, Peter finished tapping out a text message into his new phone. He was still deciding whether using it for what he was currently doing was a good idea, but it wasn’t like he had another one lying around right now. His best hope was that Gwen remembered the coded speech they used months ago actually meant and picked up on what he was trying to say. By the time he hit send, it read something like this:

_Think I missed a call from Mr. O. Need you to pick up some papers from work while I make a house call._

The response came almost instantaneously.

_Are they on your desk or still in the lab?_

Peter smiled as he sent back, _Desk_. As he launched himself off the edge of the rooftop, the thought that he should tell her how much he appreciated little favors like this more crossed his mind. Now that he was sure Gwen knew what to do, he set his mind towards where he needed to go.  

Back in the lab, he’d found the paths of the insects oddly familiar because they looked like his patrol routes. That in itself wasn’t weird, since he’d been web-swinging for nearly three years, and he’d taken a lot of different patrol routes with a lot of different variations. He barely bothered to write them down after the first few months when he noticed he switched at least one street nearly nightly. The real issue is that not only were those routes from just a few months ago, but he used them with a few particular places in mind.

Both of the two paths in question intersected at several points. There were places where he’d stop to eat, usual trouble spots, and places to rest, just like on all of his patrol routes. All of those places would either have been checked out by the Avengers and whatever organization they were working with or would be checked out soon. Both of them also intersected at several seemingly abandoned buildings and construction sites, the first of which appeared, at least on the map, to be both the origin and disappearance site of the ants. That was already bad news, considering who owned the site. As far as Peter knew, it hadn’t changed hands in the months since its sudden shutdown.

Mentally, Peter sighed. Despite himself, he was already regretting not saying anything in the lab. The Avengers seemed like they were at a dead end in their own investigation, and it seemed like they had a lot more resources to get things done than he did. Then again, he’d be left out of the loop. He’d also have to tell them _why_ his patrol routes started to center around Oscorp owned buildings for a span of a few months, and he was really not ready to tell that story or be labeled obsessive. Plus, if it turned out he was being paranoid, then, well, he’d just look crazy.

 _Maybe not saying anything was best,_ Peter thought.

When the closest of the old, abandoned buildings owned by Oscorp that also happened to be along the paths of the insects currently threatening New York came into view, Peter begged for it to still be in the same state as when he left it over six months ago.

On the outside, it looked like a run-down, incredibly dusty warehouse. The paint was peeling, but you could still see that it used to be an ugly, greyish-blue. Several of the wooden boards needed to be replaced along entire sides. You could see through the rather large windows that nothing of interest was inside, and it wasn’t exactly the best spot to stay for the night for anyone looking for shelter. It was cold and wet due to a hole in the roof, a lot of the streetlights around it weren’t well taken care of, and no one lived too close. When Peter had found the warehouse, he immediately decided it was perfect for when he needed to nap while on patrol for those very reasons. Well, minus the wet and cold thing.

Months ago, the same warehouse had kicked off a series of events that Peter would rather forget. This warehouse led to the day Peter learned there were villains, and then there were  _villains_. A difference he could feel much longer than it took for the hole in his stomach and the burns to heal.

Peter sighed as he slowed his swing and came to a full stop on the roof of the warehouse. The outside of it wasn’t what he had come for. Hopping down through the roof, onto a wobbly support beam, and finally landing on a rickety loft that once upon a time held shipping crates, Peter paused for a moment to wait for his eyes to adjust to the heavy darkness now surrounding him.

Immediately, he began to notice signs that someone had been there recently. Dust was just starting to reaccumulate in places that shouldn’t have been touched in months, then there were the fresh scrapings on the concrete floor from heavier objects being moved around. None of those were good signs unless someone suddenly decided they wanted to remodel. Peter felt along the ground for where the trap door was, making sure he could still feel the minuscule cracks between the solid floor and the hidden doorway. If someone had come here to seal it up in the months he hadn’t been by to check on it, then there would be no point.

Peter then moved cautiously to where he remembered the switch to open the door was. Feeling around the wall like a madman, Peter finally grasped something that didn’t quite feel like it fit in, and he was able to flip it. Like magic, the concrete floor silently and slowly lifted up and revealed a thin staircase just tall and wide enough for a man to fit through.

 _Bingo,_ Peter thought.

Accidentally tripping a mechanism and opening a secret passage that led to a stash of weapons and equipment for the new-in-town villain was not what Peter expected to do on, like, his third trip here. Research of land deeds led him to a shell company, which was owned by another shell company, and through a whole lot of digging (and a little bit of hacking that might’ve been illegal) he landed at none other than Oscorp. This, and all the other weird tidbits of information that he’d picked up along the way, only brought on more questions that needed a lot of answers.

Oscorp held a multitude of unused, downright decrepit buildings, along with a handful of nearly empty plots of land with construction being started then stopped almost immediately, all purchased through shell corporations and wasn’t doing much of anything with any of them. At least, nothing publicly. Determining whether each of these were fronts for a supervillain’s hideout, or just backlogged corporate whatever, was the tough part. Even if Peter broke into every warehouse and construction site and searched all of them for hidden rooms it wouldn’t answer a lot of his questions. Mainly, what they were doing, and who exactly was doing it. Not unless he could find something at all of them that tied it all together. If Peter knew one thing for certain, it was that no one was  _that_  stupid, no matter how much he wished they would be. (Well, maybe the Rhino was). After a few minor incidents at some of the other lots, and finding next to nothing, he went directly to the source. Oscorp would have to have some sort of record of what he was finding, somewhere.

But, more importantly, he went to prove to himself that his best friend’s dad didn’t-  _couldn’t,_ have a hand in any of the things he was finding.

He knew what kind of security they had, having been in the lower levels enough times with Harry, and an inkling of how hard it would be to break in. So Friendly Old Spider-Man recruited Oscorp Intern Gwen, whom he had saved a number of times (by coincidence, of course) and promised it was for the best of causes. With her help, he’d be able to sneak past security, make it safely into a high-security area, and access the server.

Then things went wrong, as they always tend to do.

After a fight that led to the partial destruction of the top three floors of the Oscorp building, Peter was left with a hole in his gut as well as various burns across his body, one nearly entirely melted webshooter, a shredded costume, and the knowledge that his now former best friend Harry’s father was the supervillain that’d been trying to chase him off his trail. The same one that’d been trying to kill him.

_Norman Osborn. The Green Goblin._

The cover-up was spectacular. A former disgruntled employee attacked the CEO of Oscorp. A little cliché, but it worked. Norman hadn’t been seen since in the public eye since, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t doing anything dastardly. If he had any sense, he wouldn’t come back. Then again, as Peter knew all too well, the words Osborn and sense never exactly fit together, no matter which one you were talking about.

As he walked down the stairs, Peter thought about all of this, the things he really tried not to think about for the past six months and tried to be as optimistic as possible. Hopefully, all of Norman’s old stuff would still be here, rotting like the warehouse that sat on top of it. 

If only he could be so lucky.


End file.
